The land of Cambodia
During the Angkorean period Cambodia stretched between the South China and Andaman Seas, but today it comprises a little over 181 000
square kilometres: not a large country, but not a tiny one either. It is roughly half the size of Germany and three times as large as Belgium.
It has a tropical climate: warm the whole year round, with a six-month dry season with frequent drought, and a monsoon of astonishingly
intense rains.
Physically, Cambodia is a vast, shallow bowl with the edges rising steeply to the north, the east and the south into wild, jungle-cloaked
mountains and plateaux. These jungles are home to a variety of birds and animals, including tigers, wild cats, wild buffaloes, monkeys,
elephants and rhinoceros, various kinds of snakes including the cobra, and the Siamese crocodile. Their numbers, however, are falling steadily
due to logging, hunting and the encroachment of human settlement.
The Siamese crocodile was thought to be extinct, but zoologists recently found small numbers of them living in the remote Cardamom Mountains,
protected by the people of a nearby village. That tigers still exist is attested to by my friend Mathieu Guérin, who was stalked by one in
the isolated mountains of Mondulkiri province while doing fieldwork in the late 1990s.
On the west and the south-east of the great central basin ofCambodia, the flatlands stretch across into Thailand and Vietnam,forming ‘gates’ as it were into the kingdom, through which throughout
the centuries invading armies have often poured. The central basin is dominated by an intriguing natural hydraulic system, on which the prosperity
of the kingdom has long depended. At the centre of it is a vast cocoa-coloured sheet of water, Lake Tonlé Sap (the Great Lake), the
largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. In the north of the country,
the Mekong, one of the largest rivers of the world, rushes from Laos over a series of spectacular rapids and falls. Then, at a more sedate pace,

it courses into the Cambodian basin, past the towns of Stung Treng, Kratie and Kompong Cham, to the capital city of Phnom Penh, where
the waters form a giant St Andrews shaped cross known to the French as the Quatre Bras, or ‘Four Arms’. Here, the main river splits into two
channels, the Mekong proper and the Bassac, the first of the many distributaries of the Mekong delta, through which the waters pour
through Vietnamese territory into the South China Sea. Another river,known as the Tonlé Sap, which most of the time is a tributary of the
Mekong, forms the fourth arm of the cross, winding upstream from Phnom Penh.

A remarkable ecosystem
The Mekong, the world’s 12th longest river, rises thousands of kilometres away on the Tibetan plateau and every year, after the spring thaw
in the mountains, the snow-fed waters surge downstream in a mighty flood. In fact, so great is the volume of water that it is unable to drain
through the delta and backs up into the Tonlé Sap past the capital,reversing the flow so that the water flows upstream, past the old capital
at Udong and into the lake of the same name as the river. When this happens, the surface area of the lake expands enormously, forming an
immense inland sea of over 13 000 square kilometres and attaining a depth of up to 10 metres. In October or November, the direction of flow
changes and the waters are carried away to the sea. The enormous volumes of water, silt and nutrients give rise to a teeming population
of over 200 varieties of fish, and these form the major source of protein for the people of Cambodia. Over one million people earn their living
directly from fishing and some three million live around the lake, some by flood retreat farming.

Contrary to popular perception, not all of Cambodia’s soils are fertile, but the most fertile tend to be in the vicinity of Lake Tonlé Sap
and the Mekong, and it is here that the densest concentrations of people are found. This invaluable ecosystem, sadly, is under threat from both
logging and pollution from chemicals and sewage. Already, many species of fish, birds, turtles, snakes and crocodiles have disappeared. During
Sihanouk’s time, signs warned people (roughly translated): ‘Don’t waste our national patrimony, the forest’ and ‘If we degrade the soil, we will
perish’. The message was ignored.

The people of Cambodia
According to Cambodia’s National Institute of Statistics, there are today over 13 million people living within the frontiers of the Kingdom of
Cambodia. Some hundreds of thousands of other ethnic Khmers live outside of the country in the Vietnamese-administered lower Mekong
delta, and in Thailand, particularly to the north of the Dangrek Mountains but even to the west of Bangkok. The overwhelming majority of
the population is rural and the only real city is the capital, Phnom Penh,which is home to over one million people and is more than eight times
the size of the largest town, Battambang, which has around 125 000 inhabitants.

Phnom Penh is a sprawling tropical city running along the Tonlé Sap and Bassac rivers and contains an intriguing mix of architectural
styles, from the crassly modern and the jerry-built to the elegant cream and lemon-painted French colonial buildings. The central market is a
fine example of Art Deco architecture, although its lines are partially obscured by the tarpaulin-draped stalls of the traders outside. The city
took its name from the Khmer word for hill, phnom, and the hill in question,which is surmounted by a large bell-shaped stone stupa, is situated
in the northern outskirts of the central city. Although Phnom Penh is over 500 years old, until the coming of the French in 1863 it was little
more than a collection of ramshackle brick and wooden shops and houses close to the river. By the early 20th century, their efforts had
transformed it into what the French writer Rose Quaintenne described as ‘a very picturesque town . . . [which was] very pretty and seductive’.
Alongside the dominant Khmers, there are large minorities of Chams, Vietnamese, Chinese and hill peoples. The Chinese, who have been present in the country since pre-Angkorean times, are primarily
city dwellers, as are many Vietnamese, although the latter also make their living as fishermen on the Tonlé Sap, the Great Lake of central
Cambodia. The Chinese and Vietnamese have provided a disproportionate number of the country’s traders, businessmen and skilled workers.
The Chams, who speak their own language and practise the Sunni variant of Islam, are the descendents of the once mighty empire ofChampa, sacked by the Vietnamese in 1471, mixed with more recent
Muslim Malay immigrants. They have been renowned as cartwrights and woodworkers. Although their number fell by around 36 per cent under Pol Pot, there are today about half a million Chams in Cambodia.
They live in their own villages, replete with mosques, to which they are summoned to prayer not by the cries of a muezzin as elsewhere
in Darul Islam, but by drums and gongs.

The hill peoples (known politely as Khmer Loeu by the Cambodians,but more generally by the derogatory Phnong, meaning ‘savage’ or ‘slave’) generally live in the remote uplands around the perimeter of
the country and speak a variety of dialects and languages, some of which are related to Khmer. Many are animist and traditionally they have been
non-state peoples who have paid little regard to frontiers. Traditionally they have practised swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture and live
a semi-nomadic communal life. There are also smaller minorities of Lao, Thais and Shans, the latter once well known as workers on the Pailin
gem fields near the Thai border. With the probable exception of the hill peoples, all of the minorities suffered cruel discrimination during
the Pol Pot period (the Cham mosques were defiled as pigsties) and there is still widespread animosity towards the Vietnamese. Most Khmers are peasants, steeped in traditional ways of life, and
it is arguably this tenacity of tradition that has enabled them to survive their country’s appalling catastrophes. In many respects, the countryside
has not changed much since ancient times. The wooden buffalo carts and ploughs are timeless, sugar palms still dot the landscape above the
intense green of the ripening rice in paddy fields that are too irregular in shape and size to belong to the more orderly Vietnamese countryside.
This contrast hints at what is one of the sharpest cultural divides in Asia, between Indianised Cambodia and Sinitic Vietnam. Many rural
Khmers live in the same kinds of houses as their remote ancestors: palm thatch huts with bamboo frames raised on stilts against floods and
reptiles, with a few modest possessions and frugal diets based on rice, fruit, vegetables and prahoc (a pungent, fermented fish paste that
provides the bulk of their protein). Many still wear the dress of their ancestors, simple black garments enlivened by the colourful checked
scarf known as the krama, and at times the ornate sampot, the anklelength skirt of the women. The rural folk are mostly burned almost black
by the sun, but the better-off urban dwellers, particularly the women,are often of a lighter complexion.
Khmers are devoutly religious, practising the Theravada strain ofBuddhism, mixed with elements of folk religion, superstition and
remnants of Hinduism, or more accurately Sivaism. The central focus of village life is always the Buddhist temple, or wat, and the saffron-clad monks beg for alms as they have done for many
hundreds of years. For many Khmers, religion and life are inseparable and one of the greatest horrors of the Pol Pot period was the government’s
attempt to stamp religion out. Theravadism is so closely interwoven with Khmer life that 600 years of Christian missionary activity
has been a dismal failure, unlike in some neighbouring countries.
Iberian Catholic priests lamented the hold of Buddhist ‘wizards’ overthe people and subsequent American Protestant missions secured few converts despite vigorous proselytism. What remains a mystery is why
the Khmers rejected their earlier Sivaism and Mahayana Buddhism and embraced the Theravada doctrines with such fervour in the 13th century,
although scholars such as George Coedès have made educated guesses,as is discussed in the chapter on Angkor. Whatever the reason, it has
been a lasting element of Khmer culture, and has enabled them to endure what has too often been a melancholy history.

CAMBODIA BEFORE ANGKOR
For most people, the ancient city of Angkor is synonymous with Cambodia,but the Angkorean Empire dates only from 802 AD, when King Jayavarman II moved upstream from the Mekong Valley to found a new
capital on higher ground near the north-western tip of the Great Lake,the Tonlé Sap. The country, however, was inhabited long before that.
Stone Age remains indicate human presence in what we now callCambodia for tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years. We cannotsay if these people were the distant ancestors of the present-day Khmers,
but it does seem that the Khmer–Mon people settled in the area between Burma and the South China Sea some time before the third millennium BC, after migrating from the north. For most of this gulf of
unrecorded time, the inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, nomads who roamed the forests and marshlands in search of game and vegetable foods. It is likely also that others practised swidden, or slash-and-burn
farming, much as the Khmer Loeu tribes or hill peoples still do today,cutting and burning clearings in the forest and growing crops for a year
or so before moving on when the soil is exhausted.There is archaeological evidence to show that some of these nomads began a more settled, agriculturally based existence around
7
3000 BC, particularly east of the Mekong near the present-day settlements of Chup and Snuol. At some stage during this process,rudimentary state societies must have replaced the ‘primitive communism’
of these people’s ancestors, which if like the simple societies ofthe hill peoples today, was based around a collective, non-state way oflife. The early sedentary people used copper and bronze tools from at
least 1500 BC. One thousand years later, these people—or others like them—lived in fortified settlements, using iron tools, in sophisticated
social systems made possible by the creation of a social surplus productbased on efficient agriculture and animal husbandry.
It is highly unlikely that there was any single unified state during this period; probably there were numerous petty principalities, ruled
over by local chieftains, or pons. It might be tempting to impose the idea of ‘Cambodia’ on to the distant past, but all the evidence indicates
that there was no unitary Cambodian state until after the foundation of Angkor at the beginning of the ninth century AD. Moreover, there
is no hard evidence to prove that these early inhabitants were Khmers at all—it is not until the seventh century AD that stone inscriptions
in the Khmer language began to occur. It is entirely possible that the inhabitants of the early settlements were ancestors of the modern
Chams, or of some other people who might have died out or been pushed out by later settlers. After all, by way of comparison, until the fifth
century AD, with the onset of the Dark Ages and the Saxon invasions, the inhabitants of what is today England were Romanised Celts, the ancestors not of the modern English but of the Welsh and
the Cornish.

Ancient Funan
Whoever they were, by the beginning of the first century AD the inhabitants of Cambodia had achieved a high level of civilisation, influenced
by the culture of India. One polity (or perhaps group of polities), known to us as Funan, has left an extensive record of its existence and way
of life. The pre-Angkor scholar Michael Vickery has warned against assuming that Funan was a unified state—it is possible that it was
a loose alliance of port towns in the lower Mekong delta. However,the existence of large canals suggests a strong state power capable of
planning and managing the large numbers of labourers required forsuch projects. Such workforces would have depended on regular food
supplies, produced by efficient agriculture and with an efficient tax collection system. On the other hand, we know that the city-states
of Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy were capable of building public works and large monuments without direction by overarching
‘national’ or supra-national polities, so Vickery is probably right about pre-Angkorean Cambodia.
The Chinese chroniclers claim that the first king of Funan was a man called Fan Shih-Man, but we have no way of telling whether that
was his real name, or if indeed he was the first king, or if he ruled overa much greater territory than the other pons or petty chieftains of the
time. The name Fan Shih-Man bears no relation to any of the Southeast Asian languages; it is a Chinese corruption of an indigenous name,
but the question is, a corruption of what? The American scholar Lawrence Palmer Briggs believed that ‘Fan’ might have been a corruption
of the Sanskrit suffix ‘varman’, which means protector, and which was appended to the names of many subsequent kings and petty kings
in Cambodia. Michael Vickery argues more plausibly that ‘Fan’ is a corruption of the Khmer–Mon pon, which died out before Angkor.
Again, we have no way of knowing the ethnicity of the inhabitants of Funan, although if Vickery is right in his speculation about the
origins of words such as pon, perhaps we might call them proto-Khmers.
What language they spoke in everyday life we do not know. Although Funan was a literate, Indianised society, all trace of the books in what
the Chinese described as impressive libraries have disappeared in the heat and humidity, and all stone inscriptions from before the seventh
century are in Sanskrit. Indeed, we have no way of knowing even what Cambodia before Angkor the Funanese called themselves: Funan itself is a Chinese word, and
although scholars have suggested it might be a corruption of the Khmer word phnom, this will remain speculation unless further evidence comes
to light. On the other hand, Khmer folklore has it that the Cambodian people built a town at Angkor Borei, in the Mekong delta, around the
time of Funan. However, folklore cannot put precise dates on places and events and there is no evidence to support the existence of Khmer
speakers in the lower delta until the seventh century (although this does not mean that they did not exist).
What we do know of Funan comes from three sources: Chinese dynastic chronicles, Sanskrit stone inscriptions and the archaeological
record. The earliest account of the kingdom is contained in the ‘Chinshu’,or the history of the Chin Dynasty, from 265–419 AD. Its reliability
is a matter of debate, given that the writers often wrote hundreds of years after the events they were describing and on the basis of hearsay
and second-hand reports. Nevertheless, the chronicles do give us some tantalising details of a long-gone civilisation. They tell us that the
common people originally went naked, even in the streets of their towns,and that they were ‘ugly, black and fuzzy haired’—a common (and unfair)
criticism by the ethnocentric Chinese, who valued light skin colouring and spurned the ‘barbarians’ of the tropical lands. Puzzlingly, the
Funanese are also described as being peaceful yet warlike, honest yet cunning. Probably, like human beings in general, they were a mixture
of traits, although the discrepancies perhaps point to multiple authors,poor editing or muddled data available to the writers.
The Funanese, unlike the later Khmers, appear to have been keen seafarers, trading with India and China and sending tribute to the Chinese
emperors. If Funan were a unitary state its capital is not known, with conflicting claims made by modern writers for Vyadhapura, Angkor Borei,
Banteay Prei Nokor and even Prey Veng, all situated in the Mekong delta or reasonably close to it. Another Funanese centre, the port town
of Oc Eo in what is today called the Camau peninsula, was excavated by the French archaeologist Louis Malleret before World War II.
Oc Eo was laid out geometrically, which suggests that it was planned—again by a strong state power, however geographically limited
the extent of its authority might have been. The ruins of some brick buildings remain; stone is rarely found in the alluvium of the delta and
the wooden or bamboo houses of the common people have long since disappeared. The brick buildings were probably temples and/or mausoleums, but they are of a simple design and do not appear to have
housed bas-reliefs (stone friezes) as in the later temples of Angkor.
One intriguing building at Oc Eo was a square brick structure, called ‘Edifice A’ by Malleret. He speculated that perhaps it was a ‘tower of
silence’ similar to the raised platforms on which the Parsees of India to this day leave out their dead for consumption by vultures. Other writers
have disputed this, noting Chinese accounts that the Funanese dead were cast into the delta waters and presumably eaten by the crocodiles.
As elsewhere in Cambodia, further exploration of archaeological sites was interrupted by the subsequent decades of war, domestic
upheaval and international isolation. It is likely that what we know ofFunan will be greatly enhanced by the current work of the Lower
Mekong Archaeological Project (LOMAP), coordinated by the University of Hawaii.
Water was a significant element of life for the Funanese. Rainfall averages 2540 millimetres per year in the delta, and immense quantities
of water pour through the network of distributaries of the Mekong.
Although some writers concluded that the canals of Funan were the model for the presumed ‘hydraulic city’ of Angkor, based on irrigation,
in fact Funan had too much water, rather than seasonally too little like its illustrious successor. In order to farm the low-lying, swampy delta
lands, excess water had to be drained off into the Mekong’s distributaries and provision made to prevent flooding. Essentially, the canals were for
drainage. It is possible, too, that they served also as communication routes, linking Oc Eo with Angkor Borei and other centres for trade
purposes. Oc Eo itself seems to have been, like Venice, built on canals,which the Chinese tell us were swarming with crocodiles.

The Chinese have left us fascinating details of the customs of the people. Like the modern Khmers, the Funanese lived in simple houses
made of wood or bamboo, with palm thatch roofs and elevated on stilts.Their staple foods were, as today, rice and fish, the latter being plentiful
in the streams and marshes. They also cultivated and ate fruits such as oranges and pomegranates, and grew sugar cane, perhaps fermenting
the juice for alcoholic drinks. The French scholar Paul Pelliot tells us that they shaved their heads to mourn the dead, that at some stage they
adopted loincloths to cover their nakedness, perhaps on the orders of their ruler, and that they watched cock and hog fights for diversion.
The Funanese also had advanced metallurgical technology. They used bronze and iron tools and were capable of designing and smelting intricate
bronze ornaments, some of which have survived and are housed in museums. Slavery was an integral part of what must have been a highly stratified society. Justice was rudimentary, but a legal code probably
existed and like that of India (and that of Angkor and post-Angkorean Cambodia) included trial by ordeal. Innocence might be decided if a suspect was not eaten after being thrown to the ubiquitous
crocodiles.
Although there is no evidence to suggest, as some writers have done, that the civilisations of the region were built by waves of immigrants
from India, Indian cultural influences were crucial in shaping societies such as Funan. Indian traders arrived in the region in at least
the first century AD and Funan became linked to a system of trade routes stretching as far away as Persia and Europe to the west and China
to the north. According to the Chinese chronicles, the Funanese also had a powerful navy, which suggests that they themselves ventured onto
the seas to trade. Excavations of Funanese sites have unearthed Roman coins, although it is unlikely that any Funanese sailors travelled as far
as Europe and the coins probably changed hands many times across the continents and oceans before they arrived in Funan.
Indian influence was above all religious and cultural, but this would have had political ramifications, too. The Funanese adopted Sanskrit
in the same way that European societies later used Latin for liturgical and intellectual purposes. Chinese visitors in the third century AD
saw large libraries, with extensive collections of Sanskrit books. None of these have survived the insects and humidity, but it is probable that
they resembled the religious books still in use in 19th century Cambodia, which were made of palm leaves stitched or glued together. Perhaps
too, like the books the Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan later observed at Angkor, the pages were dyed black and written on (or scratched)
with a sharp stylus. The Indians most certainly brought the Hindu religion, with the worship of Siva, Brahma and Vishnu and the Hindu
world view, with the idea of Mount Meru as the centre of the world,surrounded by oceans, to be replicated in the erection of temples on
hilltops, with water around the perimeters of the sites. There are also examples of early Buddhist art in Cambodia from this period. It is likely
that in those days, as is the case with Buddhism in Cambodia today,Indian religion was blended with earlier folk religions and superstitions.

The decline of Funan
According to the Chinese accounts, the last king of Funan was called Rudravarman and he was chiefly distinguished in their eyes because he
offered the gift of a live rhinoceros to the Emperor at Beijing in 539 AD.After this, the historical record becomes somewhat blurred. For many
years, it was believed that Funan declined or disappeared because it wasthreatened by the rise of another, more powerful state called Chenla or
Zhenla to the north. Again, Chenla, like Funan, is a Chinese corruption of an indigenous word, but we do not know what. There is a Chinese account of seventh century Cambodia, but it was written by
Ma Touan-Lin in the 13th century, many hundreds of years after the events it describes. Although it contains many details, one is inclined
to be sceptical given that the author believed Funan was an island. (It is, however, possible that Ma Touan-Lin believed this because one or
Cambodia before Angkor more of the Funanese towns might have been built on islands in the delta.) Chinese sources also mention a King Bhavavarman, who lived
during the late sixth century, and whom the scholar George Coedès believed might have been descended from Funanese royalty and married
into a Khmer family from further inland.
Some authors even claimed that there were two Chenlas—one dubbed Chenla-of-the-Land, and the other Chenla-of-the-Water. This is possibly an echo of the confusion of a time in which the Cambodian
lands were divided into a number of principalities. There is not even agreement about where Chenla might have been, or hard evidence to back up claim and counterclaim. Some accounts place Chenla in the
Champassak region of what is today southern Laos. However, Michael Vickery points out that the inscriptions left by the chieftains of the adjoining Dangrek region make no reference to Chenla, and that it is
most likely that Chenla existed within the boundaries of the modern Cambodian state, somewhere between the Great Lake to the west and Kampot, Takeo or Kompong Speu to the east, and within the Mekong
Valley. The question is whether Chenla was a unified state, or whether Cambodia was divided into a number of principalities in the sixth,
seventh and eighth centuries; probably the latter is the case. As Vickery points out, there was an ‘explosion’ of Khmer epigraphy from the seventh
century, with the earliest recorded Khmer stone inscription dating from 612 AD at Angkor Borei. None of this refers to what the Chinese called
Chenla. Probably, the decline of Funan was relative, with power devolving to a multiplicity of petty kingdoms along the Mekong.
What is at least clear is that the people who lived in the lower Mekong Valley and delta in this period were the ancestors of the modern
Khmers, speaking an archaic form of the Cambodian language. The last years of the pre-Angkorean period appear to have been a dark era for
the Khmers. It is probable that the Javanese invaded Cambodia during the eighth century and enforced vassal status on to the Khmer kings. A
travelling Arab merchant, Suleyman, has recorded how a disgruntled Cambodian monarch, perhaps King Mahipativarman, expressed the wish to have the head of Saliendra, the Sultan of Zabag (Java), handed
to him on a platter. Saliendra heard of this, and resolved to punish his unruly vassal. He dispatched troops, who put the Khmers to flight, decapitated
the unhappy Khmer king and placed his head on a platter for Saliendra.
Jayavarman II moves his capital to the Great Lake region Out of adversity, however, came triumph. In the last years of the eighth century, a restless Khmer king, Jayavarman II, resolved to move his
capital from the lower Mekong to what is today the Siem Reap region north of the Great Lake. Vickery believes it likely that Jayavarman II
came from eastern Cambodia, close to the Cham lands. In all probability, when he reached adulthood he would have been one petty Khmer kinglet among many. Yet he was to achieve extraordinary things. He
was to reign for 48 years, to unite and pacify the multifarious statelets of the Khmer lands and to throw off the Javanese yoke.
Curiously, given his pivotal importance in Cambodian history, we know relatively little of Jayavarman II’s reign. The surviving stone
inscriptions don’t reveal much and the Chinese chronicles are silent.
Yet in 802 AD, according to the inscriptions, this man was to found the Angkorean Empire and establish a line of devarajas, or god-kings, that was to last for over 600 years and establish a mighty civilisation
that could rival any of the other states of antiquity. His reign marks a sharp punctuation in the relative equilibrium of Khmer politics and
society.

THE ANCIENT ANGKOREAN CIVILISATION
The world loves a good mystery, especially if it is an ancient one.Ancient Egypt provided the ‘riddle of the Sphinx’. Religious zealots have claimed the antique cities of the Americas were the work of extraterrestrials.
The temples of Ancient Angkor—the largest ruins in the world and the only archaeological site visible from outer space—have presented their own share of riddles and these have prompted fanciful
explanations for generations of visitors and readers.1 The novelist Pierre Loti wrote in the first decade of the 20th century of Angkor as a remote
place steeped in impenetrable mystery: nothing could be known about the purposes of the ruins, a brooding, unfathomable Other. Even the
age of the city was exaggerated in many accounts.
The French naturalist Henri Mouhot is supposed to have ‘discovered’Angkor by accident, allegedly whilst chasing butterflies in the jungle—a claim he himself never made as he was guided there
by a French priest, Father Sylvestre. Another French missionary, Father Bouillevaux, had left an account of an earlier visit and Mouhot was
aware of this. When questioned about Angkor’s origins, Khmer peasants said giants built it. Europeans commonly believed that the builders
belonged to a ‘vanished race’. Others claimed that the city was of Indian, Roman, or even Italian origin, alleging common features with Mediterranean
architecture. Victorian etchings depict intrepid Frenchmen in tropical whites and sola topees treading resolutely amidst broken masonry festooned with the roots of giant trees. So potent was the image
that people reacted with horror when archaeologists of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient began to clear the forest and restore the temples. Even today, the root-bound ruins of Ta Prohm pander to this
taste for the ‘exotic’.The truth about Angkor is rather more prosaic and yet, on another plane, more fascinating, because it is a story not of giants or extraterrestrials,
but of people just like us. The ancestors of today’s Khmers built Angkor and the temple complex of the Heritage Area as the centre of a powerful empire and of a dispersed city with between
700 000 and one million inhabitants; it was the most populous city of antiquity, sprawling over an area of 1000 square kilometres or more.
Today, in the elegant words of George Coedès, we see only ‘the religious skeleton of the city’, for the humble peasant dwellings and the
richly decorated pavilions of the kings have long since rotted into the earth. The city was abandoned rather later than the romantics would
have us believe and there is firm epigraphic and bibliographic evidence that it was still inhabited in the 16th century when Iberian monks first
visited Cambodia. Although there is lively debate about a number of features of Angkorean civilisation, recent technological advances have
enabled archaeologists to provide plausible answers to the puzzle of why the city was deserted. Although it is likely that a number of interlinked
causes contributed to the collapse of this great civilisation, perhaps the most important was ecological degradation of the forests,
water and soil. The fate of Angkor is a warning to the modern world that we are part of nature and must live within natural laws or face
our ecological nemesis. If I have mentioned crocodiles more than once in this book, it is because I am aware of the ecological changes that
have greatly reduced the numbers of this awesome, yet vulnerable, creature in Cambodia.
Sources of information
Thanks to the painstaking work of generations of archaeologists, philologists and other scholars, we now know a great deal about the society
that built Angkor and the other architectural marvels of Cambodia.The ruins themselves are the most obvious record of Khmer material
culture, and the bas-reliefs of the Bayon and Angkor Wat provide an extensive pictorial record of Khmer society. These illustrate the everyday
lives of the people and the deeds of the rulers. They show how the inhabitants made war, fished, farmed, sold their merchandise, played
games and erected the great monuments.
One problem has been that, unlike other ancient civilisations, the Khmers have left us no books. When H.G. Wells’ fictional time traveller
ventured far into the future, he found the ragged remnants of the books of a long-dead civilisation within the solid walls of an ancient
library. The ancient Khmers had libraries, but the books have vanished. The Chinese chronicles provide a record of the world’s longest civilisation
and the ghosts of the Romans, Greeks and Indians speak to us through the pages of their books. The Irish have the splendidly illustrated
Book of Kells, which dates almost exactly from the time at which Jayavarman II founded Angkor. The Dead Sea scrolls are even older,
dating from the first century AD, a time when thousands of miles away on the other side of Asia, the Funanese had begun construction of
their towns and libraries and canals. The soft Irish climate and the dry desert air have been kinder to paper and papyrus than the tropical heat,
humidity and voracious insects have been to the palm leaf books of the ancient Khmers.
There is only one written eyewitness record of Angkor, The Customs of Cambodia, written during the late 13th century by the Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan (Chou Ta-Kwan), who spent a year in
the capital shortly after the death of King Jayavarman VIII, the last great builder of Angkor. The country appears to have been completely
unknown to Europeans. The great Venetian traveller Marco Polo visited neighbouring Champa in 1288, and the peripatetic Italian friar Odoric
of Pordenone wandered through Indochina in the 14th century, but neither mentioned Cambodia in their accounts of their travels. When
Iberian travellers arrived in Cambodia roughly two centuries after Odoric’s visit to Champa, Angkor’s glory days were past, and the city
was menaced by its powerful neighbours, Siam and Vietnam.The Khmers of course did leave a written record, but it was carved in stone rather than written on paper. There are around 1200 stone
inscriptions in the Angkor region, written in either Sanskrit, Khmer or, from the 13th century, in Pali, the sacred language of the Theravada
Buddhists. Most of the Sanskrit inscriptions are prayers to the gods or to Buddha, or tell us the genealogies of the kings, ruling families and
Brahman priests, together with praise of their putative good works and military and civic virtues.
While the Sanskrit inscriptions are an invaluable record of the religious life of Angkor, the Khmer epigraphy tells us much more about
the everyday lives, customs and occupations of the people. The epigraphs tell us a great deal about the earthly city, the empire and the complex
and hierarchical system of administration. They show that Angkor was a highly literate society, at least among the elites, and that those
who wrote the inscriptions had a lively sense of style, with a love of puns and figures of speech and an appreciation of tragedy and comedy.
However, much of the literary treasures of Angkor perished when the frail materials on which they were written rotted to dust after the
city was abandoned. Between them, the sources allow us to understand much about a society that was once held to be impossibly mysterious.
Yet the sharp edges are blurred, the voices are muted, and we see this civilisation through a glass darkly. There are murky lacunae in our
knowledge and perhaps our explanations of Khmer society might still come under challenge in the future as fresh evidence emerges with the
new archaeological tools of aerial and satellite photography, radar imaging and radiometric dating. There are some heated debates about
Angkor, particularly around the archaeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier’s ‘hydraulic city’ hypothesis, yet as another French archaeologist
Christophe Pottier has cautioned, we should ‘put aside theoretical dogmatism’ until more facts are in.
Why was the capital moved?
The founder of Angkor, King Jayavarman II, is a shadowy figure and we still have no entirely satisfactory explanation as to why he moved his
capital from the Mekong Valley to the drier region at the north-westtip of the Great Lake. He left no inscriptions that we know of. We know
that he established his court in the region in 802 AD and that he reigned for almost 50 years before his death at Roluos, south-east of the main
complex at Angkor.
The Angkor region was not virgin land when Jayavarman II arrived. Archaeological evidence shows that the land between the Great Lake and the sandstone hills to the north was inhabited at least as far
back as 1200 BC, with Iron Age remains at Phnom Bakheng. Probably, there were small farming settlements in the region ruled over by petty kinglets. Jayavarman II’s arrival was to transform the region. From
his base at Angkor the king was able to unify the petty Khmer principalities into the single polity that was to become the centre of one of
the most powerful, wealthy and populous civilisations in ancient history.
At its zenith, Angkor was to control an empire that stretched from the South China Sea to the Isthmus of Kra and the Andaman Sea,
and northwards into what is today Laos. As historians Ian Mabbett and David Chandler have pointed out, many of the subjects of this vast empire lived at remote distances to the capital city; even if they
had obtained permission to travel, an elephant journey of only 50 miles from Battambang to Angkor would have taken five days, as it still did
in the 19th century. This was no nation-state, but a multi-ethnic empire in which one ethnic group, the Khmers, was dominant. The core of the
kingdom was the dispersed metropolis of Angkor—larger than Rome or any of the ancient Chinese cities, if we are to believe the most recent
archaeological evidence—and Angkor was a Khmer city.
King Jayavarman II’s restlessness did not end when he moved his court to the Great Lake region. During his reign he would build three capitals, abandoning each before he made his final choice at Roluos.
Regarding his move to Angkor, Michael Vickery has suggested that it resulted from military and political pressure from the hostile kingdom
of Champa. Angkor was also remote from the coast of the South China Sea—and seaborne enemies such as the Javanese—with access hindered
by the numerous sandbars and treacherous currents of the Mekong delta.
At that time, too, the Siamese threat to the west did not exist. Other writers have suggested that the lake region was the ‘natural centre’ of
the Cambodian state, at the junction of roads linking the valleys ofthe Mekong and Menam, at the highest point of navigation upstream
from the Mekong delta, with ample supplies of sandstone for building,rich in natural resources such as timber and fish, and with fertile soil
to grow rice to feed a growing population.
Yet although Cham, and perhaps Javanese, hostility might well have contributed to Jayavarman’s decision to move his capital to a more defensible site, the other explanations noted above are not very convincing.
2 The English writer Christopher Pym argues in his excellent book on Angkor that the current capital, Phnom Penh, lies at a more commanding site, the Quatre Bras. Moreover, it is likely that the land
routes were only developed after the foundation of Angkor, and the most direct route between the Mekong and Menam valleys follows the path
of the French-built railway through Battambang, to the south-west ofthe Great Lake. Nor is sandstone as close by as some writers claim.
The Phnom Kulen quarries lie some 40 kilometres to the north of the centre of Angkor and the soils are not as naturally fertile as those in

the Mekong Valley, although they are probably more fertile and lesssodic and saline than those in many other parts of Cambodia. It is true
that the Great Lake is an almost boundless source of the fish that, along with rice, is the staple of the Khmer diet, but fish are just as plentiful
elsewhere in the lake and especially around the entrance to the Tonlé Sap River that drains it via the Plain of Mud into the Mekong at the
eastern end. It is also true that there was ample timber close to Angkor for domestic buildings, scaffolding for construction of the temples and
for fuel but, then again, much of Cambodia is equally well endowed with forest.
The relative paucity of inscriptions from the reigns of Jayavarman II and his son of the same name do not help us explain the move.
Perhaps, as Pym sensibly argues, the move was sparked by Jayavarman’s desire to get out of the ‘centre of things’ in Southeast Asia by relocating
to a remote site. However, one intriguing suggestion is that climate change might have contributed to the move. James Goodman, an engineer with an interest in archaeology, argued at a recent convention
of Angkorean scholars in Japan that the move ‘coincided with a series of remarkable changes in global climate patterns’ associated with
the Southern Oscillation Index (ENSO). The late eighth century saw the onset of the ‘medieval warm period’, with a ‘wet anomaly’ in Cambodia
and ‘dry anomalies’ elsewhere on the Pacific Rim, including Java.
The wet anomaly might have caused increased flooding in the lower Mekong Valley and delta, but would also have meant more humid, favourable conditions for agriculture in the seasonally drier regions to
the north of the Great Lake. Angkor also lies on higher ground, normally beyond the reach of flooding. Goodman also speculated that the relative
decline of the power of Java, Cambodia’s former suzerain, might have been due to the onset of the dry anomaly, which would have
unfavourably affected Javanese riziculture, as it did other civilisations around the Pacific Rim. That such climate change did occur is attested
to by analysis of the pollen record, but more research needs to be done to ascertain its contribution to Jayavarman II’s move.
The move did not mean emigration to a land of milk and honey. Settlement near the tip of the lake required strenuous labour before the
virgin lands could become productive. Marshes needed to be drained,embankments built to stop floods and—as Bernard-Philippe Groslier
argues—an intricate system of canals built for irrigation purposes, for if the climate were anything like that of the Siem Reap area today, it
would have been one of six months’ rain and six months’ drought. The hydraulic system, however, was not started until after Jayavarman II’s
death, when in 877 AD King Indravarman I ordered construction of the Indratataka, the ‘sacred pool of Indra’, a large baray or reservoir
measuring 3.6 kilometres by 800 metres.
As we shall see, the question of whether Angkor depended on highly developed irrigation is a moot point. It seems likely, therefore,
that the shift to the Great Lake region would have been due at least in part to religious imperatives; Cambodia was, and still is, an intensely
religious society. As the Japanese scholar Yoshiaki Ishizawa has argued, the choice of site has religious symbolism for the Khmers, who took
their cosmology from the Indians who believed that at the centre of the world was Mount Meru, surrounded by oceans and seas and walled off
by the Himalayas. Khmers tend to build their temples on hills to reflect this belief; Angkor stood on higher ground and just as India has the
sacred Ganges and the sacred mountains, so Cambodia had the Siem Reap River and the Great Lake, with Phnom Kulen and the Dangreks
to the north. The decision to shift the Khmer capital to Angkor was probably caused by a variety of overlapping political, economic, religious
and perhaps ecological factors. Short of raising Jayavarman II from the grave, we will probably never know for sure. The kings, their temples and monuments
A passion for grand monuments marks the greater part of the six or seven centuries of Angkorean civilisation and this only abated with the
spread of Theravada Buddhism, which spurned vanity and megalomania. Slaves, serfs and artisans expended the sweat of centuries on the sandstone mausoleums-cum-temples of the kamrateng jagat, the ‘lords
of the universe’, who ruled over them. Scholars disputed the purpose of the temples for many years until in 1933 Jean Przyluski formulated
his thesis, daring for the time, that Angkor Wat was both a temple and the tomb of Suryavarman II, and thus both a sepulchre and the centre
of a funerary cult. The grand buildings of Angkor are at one and the same time funerary temples, mausoleums and tombs, the ‘distinctive
glory of the Khmer Empire’ in the words of the celebrated French epigrapher George Coedès. Although those who ordered their construction
have long since rotted into the soil, their monuments still bid us to ‘look upon my works, ye mighty, and tremble’, for the kings assigned to themselves
the title of gods—devarajas—though they were ‘creatures of clay’ like the meanest of their subjects.
Marvellous though they are as architecture and works of art,
Angkor Wat showing the five towers.
temples of Angkor are the reflection of the overweening egotism and peculiar religiosity of the hereditary rulers, for whom no sacrifice was
great enough provided it was made by their slaves and willing subjects,whose warm blood and sweat could not outlive the cold stone they
placed block on block in the exquisite confections of Angkor. Perhaps,when we gaze on these stupendous monuments, we should muse over
their human cost. That said we should be wary of extrapolating modern attitudes and ideologies into the remote Cambodian past. For many free
men—serfs at least—it was probably an honour to toil on the monuments for the glory of the god-kings; for many slaves, their condition
was one legitimised by age-old custom, as natural as the setting of the sun. They had no words for freedom and liberty.
The purpose of these immense buildings had nothing in common with the great cathedrals of Europe or the grand mosques of the Muslim
world. Nor were they like the modern pagodas of the Theravada Buddhists of Cambodia and neighbouring countries. Angkor Wat is, on the face of
it, a temple dedicated to Vishnu, but the deity worshipped here is not the same as the ancient god of the Hindu triumvirate. Rather it is King
Suryavarman II, the temple’s inspirer, who was seen in life as the incarnation of Vishnu. Hence, as eminent French scholar Paul Mus wrote,
these buildings are not so much shelters for the dead ‘as a kind of new architectural body—a house of the dead but only in the same way that
his body lived in it while still alive’. Even the numerous statues of Vishnu and Siva are dissimilar to most of their kind in India, for they have the
features of the kings who were the earthly incarnations of the gods. The temples are the houses of the god-kings, the lords of the universe, immortalised
in solid rock. They were not like pagodas, churches or mosques where the common people might come to pray. If they were ever admitted,
it would only be to grovel at the feet of the mighty devarajas.
The monument building obsession began some years after the death of Jayavarman II’s son and successor, Jayavarman III; although
these first two kings did leave some hilltop shrines and smaller monuments, they were dwarfed by later developments. A new king,
Indravarman I, ordered the previously mentioned baray and also the Preah Ko and Bakong temples. Indravarman was succeeded in 889 AD
by Yasovarman I, who built a new reservoir, the Yasodharatataka, with the Lolei temple on an artificial island in the lake. Yasovarman also
ordered construction of the temple mountain of Phnom Bakheng, excavating the slopes of a hill to form a pyramidal structure surmounted by
five central towers and 104 smaller ones. The 13th century Chinese chronicler Zhou Daguan says that a Khmer king is buried at Phnom
Bakheng, and if this is the case it was both a temple and a mausoleum, as Przyluski speculated. During Yasovarman’s reign, engineers appear
to have diverted the course of the Siem Reap River and built the large Eastern Baray, the latter fact attested to in an inscription in its northeast
corner.
Subsequent kings continued the program of temple building and waterworks. In the tenth century, King Rajendravarman ordered the construction of a series of monuments, including the Pre Rup temple.
The temple of Takeo dates from the reign of Jayavarman V in the final years of the tenth century. Suryavarman I, who reigned from 1002 until
1049, was responsible for the construction of the huge West Baray and a number of temples including Preah Vihar in the Dangrek Mountains.
Suryavarman II, who reigned in the early part of the 12th century, ordered the construction of what is arguably the most famous of the
Angkorean temples, Angkor Wat, the name of which is often confused with the city of Angkor itself because of its imposing beauty and scale.
Suryavarman II’s successor, Yasovarman II, had the temple of Bakong built. Jayavarman VII, a Buddhist king who reigned during the last
decades of the 12th century and the first two of the 13th, ordered construction of the temple of Ta Prohm and the first stages of the Terrace
of the Elephants, along with the impressive Angkor Thom, dedicated to Buddha (not Siva or Vishnu as is commonly supposed) and extensive
waterworks including the Jayatataka baray.
These public works—if such is the name for private edification at public expense—were augmented by more utilitarian infrastructure,footways, bridges, rest houses, hospitals, canals, reservoirs and embankments.
The empire was administered and policed via a network of well-maintained roads, which also served for trade purposes. These roads often ran on stone causeways or earthen embankments, high above
the floodplains of lakes and rivers, and well-engineered bridges spanned the rivers. Although the network fell into disrepair after the decline of
the empire, some of it was re-opened by the French and is still in use today. One particularly imposing bridge, the Spean Praptos, crosses
the ravine of the Stung Chikreng and is still open to traffic. Guesthouses were built at regular intervals along the major roads—22 between
Angkor and Kompong Thom alone—for shelter and security against bandits who preyed on travellers. The wealthy rode in palanquins
(hammocks slung between Y-shaped poles and carried by muscular servants), or astride horses or aboard tented structures on the backs of
elephants. But the poor travelled in buffalo carts, much the same as they do today, or else they walked. During the six-month rainy season,
boats were used for some journeys, as they were all year round on the Great Lake which lay to the south of Angkor, and along which Zhou
Daguan travelled on his way up from the far-away delta of the Mekong.
The climax of empire
Jayavarman VII’s reign, between the late 12th and early 13th centuries,is regarded as the climax of the empire. Angkor stood at the centre
of a vast realm that extended from the Andaman Sea in modern Myanmar to the South China Sea in today’s Vietnam, and far northwards
into what is now Laos. Although it might have been ultimately constrained by what modern historians call ‘imperial overstretch’,
Angkor’s expansion was checked by natural, rather than human barriers—seas, mountain ranges and impassable jungles. However, as
George Coedès has written, the huge effort needed to carry out Jayavarman VII’s building program was an ultimately unsustainable drain on
the resources of the empire. The empire also sustained vast numbers of unproductive people, including aristocrats and Brahman priests,members of the religious orders and the royal family itself. An inscription
translated by George Coedès recorded that the devaraja cult necessitated 306 372 ‘servitors’, who lived in 13 500 villages and ate 38 000 tons of rice every year. This does not take into account the
immense amount of riches in the form of silver, gold, bronze and stone appropriated by the cult.
This empire was maintained by force of arms, often clashing with neighbouring peoples such as the Chams and later the Thais, both of whom were formidable opponents. In contradiction to the modern European
stereotype of Cambodia as ‘the gentle land’, the Angkor bas-reliefs depict a warlike society. Men march in formation, armed with a variety of weapons including swords, lances, bows and arrows and clubs. Catapults
are mounted on carts or the backs of elephants. Commanders canter on horseback while their men march past resolutely in grim processions. Elephants were also employed for cavalry purposes, their
foreheads anointed with human gall which, as Zhou tells us, was drained from the bodies of hapless passers-by by men armed with special knives. Other scenes show naval battles, with unfortunates falling overboard
into the jaws of the lurking crocodiles. On the other hand, an inscription at Ta Prohm extols Jayavarman VII as a ‘provident and compassionate ruler’ and perhaps not without cause. Although he was
determined to bend the population to his will to make his mark on posterity in the form of huge temples and monuments, he also built 102 hospitals during his reign.
The last great spurt of building activity occurred during the reign of Jayavarman VII (1181–1219). These works included the construction
of Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei, Preah Khan, Banteay Chhmar and the magnificent Bayon. However, during the 16th century, when the first Europeans visited Cambodia, King Satha I carried out extensive
renovations to monuments and the hydraulic system.
Building the temples
Visitors to the ruins often wonder how they were built and where the immense blocks of stone used in their construction came from. The Khmers certainly were ingenious engineers, but the construction
program relied on the muscle power of tens of thousands of labourers. The temples are built of an assortment of materials—laterite, three different types of sandstone, and brick, some of which was rendered
with stucco. The laterite was obtainable locally, but the sandstone was brought considerable distances from the Phnom Kulen quarries, where men cut it from the living rock with crowbars, chisels and fire. Many
of the blocks weigh up to five tonnes, and the very largest include one of eight tonnes at Angkor Wat and another of almost ten tonnes at Preah Vihar.
In the past, observers have speculated that the blocks were dragged by elephants, loaded on ox carts, floated down the Siem Reap River from Phnom Kulen, or sometimes taken on rafts down other
tributaries then across the lake and up the Siem Reap River to Angkor.
While these methods are possibilities for the smaller pieces of stone, it seems unlikely they were used for the bigger blocks. Ox carts could not
support the weight and elephants probably lacked the stamina needed to transport the blocks from the Kulen Hills, which stand approximately
40 kilometres from the temple sites. In 1999, an attempt was made to float stone down the river from the ancient quarries. It was concluded
that this was an unlikely method; to move a five-tonne block would require an enormous raft built of 1000 pieces of ten-centimetre diameter
bamboo. It is more likely that human muscle power was employed, with the largest blocks requiring the strength of up to 160 men, their
task only made slightly less onerous by the use of wooden rollers, crowbars and rattan ropes. (Even today, heavy machinery is sometimes rolled
into position using similar techniques, but for a fraction of the distance.) There is some evidence to suggest this on the Bayon bas-reliefs (upper
gallery, east side), which appear to depict men hauling stone blocks with the assistance of rollers, although there is some damage to the bottom
of the frieze, which leaves this interpretation open to question. This gruelling work in the tropical heat and humidity was more than likely
allocated to the lowest grades of slaves. There was probably a more complex division of labour at the actual construction sites: general
labourers to supply raw muscle power; skilled masons and bricklayers, carpenters, scaffolders and riggers, perhaps; metalworkers, who gilded
many of the domes; and finally, the most skilled artisans of all, those who carved the statues and the exquisite and complicated bas-reliefs
in the corridors of Angkor Wat and the Bayon.
When the blocks were on site, the construction workers would take over and the exhausted transport crews would perhaps be allowed to rest a while before returning to Phnom Kulen for more stone. The
blocks were dressed on site and a close fit was achieved by grinding the blocks against each other; joints are rarely at right angles and there are
rarely perfectly flat planes. After this, the blocks would be rolled to the base of the worksite, ready to be lifted into position to where the masons
toiled high above on wooden or bamboo scaffolding probably very similar to that which is still widely used in Asia today, as is shown on the Bayon
friezes.
The builders probably used a variety of lifting gear to assist in their work. There is some evidence of the use of metal lifting dogs and clamps
and it is highly likely that blocks were also lifted on rope slings, which were attached to wooden pegs inserted into holes drilled in the stone.
Afterwards, the pegs were removed and the holes filled with mortar, as we can see on many of the monuments today. We also know from the
Bayon bas-reliefs that Khmer sailors used windlasses and pulleys, so it is probable that similar lifting gear was used at Angkor, logically in
conjunction with gin poles, sheerlegs, gallows frames, whip hoists and rudimentary cranes. Perhaps other stones were winched up temporary
inclines of compacted earth. One can imagine the scene high above the ground atop the scaffolding—workers spreading mortar compounded of powdered limestone, vegetable juice and palm sugar, in the shadow
of a huge block of stone swinging above, the labourers inching it down into position, their muscles aching from the effort. Construction work
is dangerous even today with vastly superior technology, so the death toll must have been colossal with such enormous pieces of stone, dizzying
heights and rattan ropes. We will never know how many workers plunged to their doom or were crushed to death by falling masonry. One of the most curious facts about Khmer building techniques
is that they never discovered the secret of the true arch, which employs a keystone to prevent it from falling down. Instead, the Khmer builders
used the more rudimentary method of corbelling—gradually bringing in two facing edges of wall until they touch—giving an almost gothic
appearance to the edifices. This technique can only be used with massive stone or brick walls, not for lighter domestic architecture. It can be seen
on many of the ancient temples, and even on those Angkorean bridges that are still in use today. Another curiosity is that the columns of the
temples are almost always square or rectangular in cross-section, probably because the Khmers were afraid that the natural round shape of
trees was the abode of spirits. Where columns are round in section, this is because the Khmers wished to bring spirits into the building.
What kind of civilisation built the monuments?
Today, natural decay and the ravages of vandals and thieves (including the French novelist André Malraux, it might be said) have left their
mark, but no one who visits Angkor can fail to be stirred by its grandeur. Yet, although the spectacular stone and brick ruins the kings left behind
are the most visible reminders of Angkor’s past glories, they tell us only part of the story and this chapter does not purport to be a guide
to the ancient remains. What is perhaps even more intriguing is the question of what kind of civilisation was able to devote so much labour
and so many resources to such gigantic projects. We actually know surprising amount about the lives of the common people of 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. The empire itself comprised some 90 provinces at the time of Zhou Daguan’s visit.
Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor the year after Jayavarman VIII’s death in 1295, has left us fascinating details of what the city was like
during its period of human occupation, and although the decline had already set in by then, Angkor was still an impressive place. Zhou tells
of a ‘walled city’ with five gates and lines of statues ‘brilliant with gold’. Many of the buildings were gilded; Zhou describes a ‘square tower of
gold’ (Neak Pean) at the centre of a lake, the ‘Golden Tower’ of the Bayon, and another of bronze. North of the Golden Tower was the royal
palace, an opulent wooden structure with long colonnades and floors of yellow pottery and lead tiles. The immense lintels and columns of
the palace were richly carved and there was a frieze of elephants in the chamber of state, lit by a golden window. In this setting, the king
(Srindravarman at that time) moved around in sumptuous garments bedecked with pearls and precious stones. Although he had five official
wives, he also kept a huge harem, with ‘three to five thousand’ concubines and ‘palace girls’ who seldom set foot outside the palace.
The parents of noble families thought it an honour for their daughters to be accepted. Anyone wishing an audience with the king had to abase
themselves, crawling across the floor, forbidden to actually look at this exalted personage or, more strictly, god-king.
The king never left the palace except as part of a grand procession of soldiers, palace girls, royal ministers and princes, many of them
in palanquins and chariots or astride elephants with ‘flags, banners and music’ and hundreds of golden parasols held aloft. The king himself
stood ‘erect on an elephant and holding in his hand the sacred sword’. The royal elephant’s tusks were ‘sheathed in gold’ and around the royal
beast were the massed ranks of the king’s bodyguard. Any passers-by who caught sight of the king ‘were expected to kneel and touch the
earth with their brows’. Marshals seized anyone who failed to comply,and placed him or her under arrest.

The Angkorean social system
In total, 28 kings ruled over this vast and powerful empire for over600 years. Although in theory kingship was hereditary and monarchs were devarajas, or god-kings, in practice usurpers were common enough,
the qualification being that they had to prove they were blood descendents of Jayavarman II, the founder of Angkor. It was for this reason
that dignitaries and military leaders were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the reigning king, on pain of horrible punishments.
One such oath is recorded in an inscription translated by Coedès, and promises eternal punishment in hell if it is broken. As the writers
Mabbett and Chandler remarked, although Angkorean society was hierarchical, the fact of usurpation indicates that the rulers were not
‘worshipped as gods and given unquestioning obedience by all their subjects’. The extraordinary security measures described by Zhou Daguan
above attest to this.
Nevertheless, although they feared usurpation, these kings were absolute rulers in every sense of the term. As devarajas, their power surpassed even that of the European monarchs who claimed to rule by
divine right. The inscriptions indicate that they were seen as incapable of breaking religious laws, and they were the source of all legal power
in the empire. The law itself was administered via a hierarchy of courts and legal officials. The lower courts dealt with routine matters, but
the royal court itself could deal with even the pettiest of matters. Zhou Daguan records that every day the king held two audiences, for which
no agenda was provided and which could be attended by both ‘functionaries and ordinary people’ for the adjudication of disputes. The inscriptions show that commoners could bring lawsuits against one
another and a common method of ascertaining who was in the wrong was to place the plaintiff and the accused in stone towers for a period
of three to four days. It was held th