Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE LEGACY OF THE ANGKORIAN EMPIRE
In the mid-nineteenth century, French explorers began stumbling across the
monumental
ruins
of a centuries-dead empire that had once blanketed mainland Southeast Asia. When
word of these jungle-clad “lost cities” reached Europe, the intrigued populace assumed
they must have been the work of expatriate Romans or perhaps some far-wandering tribe
of Israelites. But as French exploration and colonization of Indochina expanded, scholars
began to acknowledge they were the work of a highly sophisticated Southeast Asian cul-
ture.
The Khmer
, whose descendants inhabit
Cambodia
today, controlled a vast empire that
stretched north to Vientiane in Laos and as far west as the present-day border of Thailand
and Burma. From its capital, located at Angkor in what is now northwestern Cambodia, a
long line of kings reigned with absolute authority, each striving to build a monument to his
own greatness which would outdo all previous monarchs. With cultural trappings inherited
from earlier Khmer kingdoms, which in turn had borrowed heavily from Indian merchants
that once dominated trade throughout Southeast Asia, the Khmer rulers at Angkor vener-
ated deities from the
Hindu
and
Buddhist
pantheons. Eventually, a new and uniquely Kh-
mer cult was born, the
devaraja
or god-king, which propagated the belief that a Khmer king
was actually an incarnation of a certain Hindu deity on earth. Most of the Khmer kings of
Angkor identified with the god Shiva, although Suryavarman II, builder of
Angkor Wat
,
the most magnificent of all Khmer monuments, fancied himself an earthly incarnation of
Vishnu.
In 1177, around 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, armies from the rival kingdom
of Champa took advantage of political instability and sacked Angkor, leaving the empire
in disarray. After some years of chaos,
JayavarmanVII
took control of the leaderless Kh-
mer people, embracing Mahayana Buddhism and expanding his empire to include much
of present-day Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. But the days of Khmer glory were numbered.
Soon after the death of Jayavarman VII the empire began to decline and by 1432 was so
weak that the
Siamese
, who had previously served as mercenaries for the Khmer in their
campaigns against Champa, were also able to give Angkor a thorough sacking. The Sia-
mese pillaged the great stone temples of the Angkorian god-kings and force-marched mem-
bers of the royal Khmer court, including the king's personal retinue of classical dancers,
musicians, artisans and astrologers, back to Ayutthaya, then the capital of Siam. To this
day, much of what Thais perceive as Thai culture, from the sinuous moves of classical dan-
cers to the flowery language of the royal Thai court, was actually acquired from the Khmer.
When the Angkorian empire collapsed, Siam moved in to fill the power vacuum and much
of the Khmer culture absorbed by the Siamese was passed on to the Lao.
