khmer people

The legendary founders of the kingdom of the Kambuja are the brahmin Kambu Swayambhuva and the Nāga princess Soma or Mera. Their marriage is said to have given rise to the name Khmer. The Khmer people named their kingdom Kambuja after the kshatriya Kambojas of Iron Age India. The Kambuja tribe are believed by modern scholars to have been an Iranian people, but links between the Kambuja tribe and the Kambuja kingdom at this stage of research are still unclear. Cambodia was created when an ancient Indian Brahmin priest married Princess Soma, a Naga princess, upon following an arrow in his dream that pointed in the direction of somewhere in Cambodia. As a dowry, the father of princess Soma drank the oceans, and the land that was revealed underneath became Cambodia, with the descendants of the priest and the princess the people known as the Khmer. This myth explains the phenomena of why the oldest Khmer wats, or temples, were always built on mountaintops, and why today mountains themselves are still revered as holy places.[25]

Arrival in Southeast Asia[edit]

The Khmers are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the area, having filtered into Southeast Asia around the same time as the Mon, who settled further to the west and to whom the Khmer are ancestrally related. Most archaeologists and linguists, and other specialists like Sinologists and crop experts, believe that they arrived no later than 2000 BCE (over four thousand years ago) bringing with them the practice of agriculture and in particular the cultivation of rice. This region is also one of the first places in the world to use bronze. They were the builders of the later Khmer Empire, which dominated Southeast Asia for six centuries beginning in 802, and now form the mainstream of political, cultural, and economic Cambodia.

The Khmers developed the Khmer alphabet, the first alphabet still in use in Southeast Asia, which in turn gave birth to the later Thai and Lao alphabets. The Khmers are considered by archaeologists and ethnologists to be indigenous to the contiguous regions of Isan, southern Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. That is to say the Khmer have historically been a lowland people who lived close to one of the tributaries of the Mekong River. The reason they migrated into Southeast Asia is not well understood, but scholars believe that Austroasiatic speakers were pushed south by invading Tibeto-Burman speakers from the north as evident by Austroasiatic vocabulary in Chinese, because of agricultural purposes as evident by their migration routes along major rivers, or a combination of these and other factors.

Upper class Khmer ladies in the 1800s.

Angkor Wat in the 1900s.

Like the other early peoples of Southeast Asia such as the Pyu, Mon, Chams, Malays and Javanese, the Khmer were part of Greater India, adopting Indian religions, sciences, and customs and borrowing from their languages. The first powerful trading kingdom in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Funan, was established in southeastern Cambodia and the Mekong Delta in the first century, although extensive archaeological work in Angkor Borei District near the modern Vietnamese border has unearthed brickworks, canals, cemeteries and graves dating to the fifth century BCE.

The Kingdom of Funan is considered to be the mother of all later Southeast Asian kingdoms. During the Funan period (1st century - sixth century CE) the Khmer also acquired Buddhism, the concept of the Shaiva imperial cult of the devaraja and the great temple as a symbolic world mountain. The rival Khmer Chenla Kingdom emerged in the fifth century and later conquered the Kingdom of Funan. Chenla was an upland state whose economy was reliant on agriculture whereas Funan was a lowland state with an economy dependent on maritime trade.

These two states, even after conquest by Chenla in the sixth century, were constantly at war with each other and smaller principalities. During the Chenla period (5th-8th century), Cambodians left the world's earliest known zero in one of their temple inscriptions. Only when King Jayavarman II declared an independent and united Cambodia in 802 was there relative peace between the two lands, upper and lowland Cambodia.

Jayavarman II (802–830), revived Cambodian power and built the foundation for the Angkorean empire, founding three capitals—Indrapura, Hariharalaya, and Mahendraparvata—the archeological remains of which reveal much about his times. After winning a long civil war, Suryavarman I (reigned 1002–1050) turned his forces eastward and subjugated the Mon kingdom of Dvaravati. Consequently, he ruled over the greater part of present-day Thailand and Laos, as well as the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. This period, during which Angkor Wat was constructed, is considered the apex of Khmer civilization.

Khmer Empire (802–1431)[edit]

Further information: Khmer Empire

The Khmer kingdom became the Khmer Empire and the great temples of Angkor, considered an archeological treasure replete with detailed stone bas-reliefs showing many aspects of the culture, including some musical instruments, remain as monuments to the culture of the Khmer. After the death of Suryavarman II (1113–50), Cambodia lapsed into chaos until Jayavarman VII (1181–1218) ordered the construction of a new city. He was a Buddhist, and for a time, Buddhism became the dominant religion in Cambodia. As a state religion, however, it was adapted to suit the Deva Raja cult, with a Buddha Raja being substituted for the former Shiva Raja or Vishnu Raja.

The rise of the Tai kingdoms of Sukhothai (1238) and Ayutthaya (1350) resulted in almost ceaseless wars with the Cambodians and led to the destruction of Angkor in 1431. They are said to have carried off 90,000 prisoners, many of whom were likely dancers and musicians.[26] The period following 1432, with the Cambodian people bereft of their treasures, documents, and human culture bearers, was one of precipitous decline.