(16) The inscriptions in Khmer are quite distinct, as they are almost exclusively concerned with drawing up inventories: the wealth of a temple calculated in numbers of paddy fields, other land holdings, domestic animals, even lists of servants, which seem to have been considered at the time rather like 'rolls of honour'. In the case of paddy fields, their value is often recorded (in kind, as a cash economy did not exist), together with their size, and the name of the previous owner. These texts have been less frequently studied than the Sanskrit poems and probably still have a good deal more information to yield about daily life, for example when they record the sale, donation or transfer of a paddy field.
There is one special category of Khmer language inscriptions: those incised on the piers at the entrance of shrines. They record the name of the monument's occupier, or occasionally the name of the donor of the statue, or that of the personage incarnated by the statue, This practice of 'personality cults', begun at this time, became widespread from the twelfth century onwards.
A few items of information can also be found in the inscriptions of neighbouring countires, especially Champa, periodically a rival of the Khmer empire. The name refers to one or several kingdoms, extending along the coastal plains of what is today's Central Vietnam, whose language belonged to the Sundic group of Western Malayo-Polynesian.
The numerous monuments can also be used to establish a kind of chronology.Some, as noted above, have yielded inscriptions which can provide a fairly firm date, and dates for many others can be proposed on comparative grounds when the decor is similar; though in such cases the chronology remains necessarily an approximation. In the early days of western historical research it was inevitable that to a large extent there would be a lack of objectivity. Indeed postulates were put forward which to this day can still be difficult to discard. Thus the art of Bayon was long thought to be the 'primitive art' and was dated to the early ninth century, until Philippe Stern and subsequently George Coedes realised at thee end of the 1920s that on the contrary it marked the end of the classical period.
Nevertheless,although the renowned study of the evolution of motifs, which Stern had elaborated in 1926 and which had brought him to this important conclusion, has given many other concrete results, it is scarcely possible to use his method rigorously across the board because of uncertainty over dates and also because the Khmers were adept at producing skilful copies of statues and motifs belonging to earlier periods.
Civilisation
Taken together the sanskrit and Khmer inscriptions allow assumptions to be made about how the temples and royalty were organised in ancient times, but between the 'pre-Angkor' period and the period of Angkor itself. Statistically, more than a third of the pre-Angkorian inscriptions make no mention of a king, whilst in those of the Angkor period it is exceptional for a king's name not to appear; a fact which is certainly of political significance.
The political situation of the country would have resembled that which existed in Gaul or Britain before the Roman invasion: a myriad of probably quarrelsome neighbouring fiefdoms. In pre=Angkor times the records show that only a few kings succeeded in grouping a number of these territories into fragile units, which usually disintegrated on the death of their founders. It can thus be conjectured that Ishanavarman I and Jayavarman I put together their fairly extensive kingdoms in this way.
From the dawn of the 'Angkor period', with Jayavarman II proclaiming himself ' the supreme king of the Khmer kings' (an example which all his successors would follow), the situation appears to have become somewhat different' But like our medieval kings, those of Angkor seem to have had considerable difficulty in reining in their most powerful 'vassls', and indeed it is quire difficult to draw precise boundaries for the lands over which each of them held sway and to ascertain the degree of power they exerted' Even within the putative territories of these kings the existence of several independent kingdoms can be detected, such as Bhavapura or the lands which centred on the Preah khan temple of Kompong Svay.
Although there is a relative abundance of Sanskrit inscriptions, it is certain that this Indian language was only used to honour the gods, and perhaps for communication among a literary elite' Indeed these Sanskrit texts occasionally bear witness to a deep knowledge of Indian culture' But in the main the language of the Empire was either Khmer or a related dialect, or in the areas now part of Thailand, Mon (which is closely related to Khmer), In areas towards the east which occasionally came under Khmer domination- as was the case of Champa- the language could be one of the many tongues in the extensive Western Malayo-Polynesian language family. Despite the views of some authors, it is not evident that Sanskrit was ever a lingua franca common to the various Indianised kingdoms of Southeast Asia,
(16) The inscriptions in Khmer are quite distinct, as they are almost exclusively concerned with drawing up inventories: the wealth of a temple calculated in numbers of paddy fields, other land holdings, domestic animals, even lists of servants, which seem to have been considered at the time rather like 'rolls of honour'. In the case of paddy fields, their value is often recorded (in kind, as a cash economy did not exist), together with their size, and the name of the previous owner. These texts have been less frequently studied than the Sanskrit poems and probably still have a good deal more information to yield about daily life, for example when they record the sale, donation or transfer of a paddy field.
There is one special category of Khmer language inscriptions: those incised on the piers at the entrance of shrines. They record the name of the monument's occupier, or occasionally the name of the donor of the statue, or that of the personage incarnated by the statue, This practice of 'personality cults', begun at this time, became widespread from the twelfth century onwards.
A few items of information can also be found in the inscriptions of neighbouring countires, especially Champa, periodically a rival of the Khmer empire. The name refers to one or several kingdoms, extending along the coastal plains of what is today's Central Vietnam, whose language belonged to the Sundic group of Western Malayo-Polynesian.
The numerous monuments can also be used to establish a kind of chronology.Some, as noted above, have yielded inscriptions which can provide a fairly firm date, and dates for many others can be proposed on comparative grounds when the decor is similar; though in such cases the chronology remains necessarily an approximation. In the early days of western historical research it was inevitable that to a large extent there would be a lack of objectivity. Indeed postulates were put forward which to this day can still be difficult to discard. Thus the art of Bayon was long thought to be the 'primitive art' and was dated to the early ninth century, until Philippe Stern and subsequently George Coedes realised at thee end of the 1920s that on the contrary it marked the end of the classical period.
Nevertheless,although the renowned study of the evolution of motifs, which Stern had elaborated in 1926 and which had brought him to this important conclusion, has given many other concrete results, it is scarcely possible to use his method rigorously across the board because of uncertainty over dates and also because the Khmers were adept at producing skilful copies of statues and motifs belonging to earlier periods.
Civilisation
Taken together the sanskrit and Khmer inscriptions allow assumptions to be made about how the temples and royalty were organised in ancient times, but between the 'pre-Angkor' period and the period of Angkor itself. Statistically, more than a third of the pre-Angkorian inscriptions make no mention of a king, whilst in those of the Angkor period it is exceptional for a king's name not to appear; a fact which is certainly of political significance.
The political situation of the country would have resembled that which existed in Gaul or Britain before the Roman invasion: a myriad of probably quarrelsome neighbouring fiefdoms. In pre=Angkor times the records show that only a few kings succeeded in grouping a number of these territories into fragile units, which usually disintegrated on the death of their founders. It can thus be conjectured that Ishanavarman I and Jayavarman I put together their fairly extensive kingdoms in this way.
From the dawn of the 'Angkor period', with Jayavarman II proclaiming himself ' the supreme king of the Khmer kings' (an example which all his successors would follow), the situation appears to have become somewhat different' But like our medieval kings, those of Angkor seem to have had considerable difficulty in reining in their most powerful 'vassls', and indeed it is quire difficult to draw precise boundaries for the lands over which each of them held sway and to ascertain the degree of power they exerted' Even within the putative territories of these kings the existence of several independent kingdoms can be detected, such as Bhavapura or the lands which centred on the Preah khan temple of Kompong Svay.
Although there is a relative abundance of Sanskrit inscriptions, it is certain that this Indian language was only used to honour the gods, and perhaps for communication among a literary elite' Indeed these Sanskrit texts occasionally bear witness to a deep knowledge of Indian culture' But in the main the language of the Empire was either Khmer or a related dialect, or in the areas now part of Thailand, Mon (which is closely related to Khmer), In areas towards the east which occasionally came under Khmer domination- as was the case of Champa- the language could be one of the many tongues in the extensive Western Malayo-Polynesian language family. Despite the views of some authors, it is not evident that Sanskrit was ever a lingua franca common to the various Indianised kingdoms of Southeast Asia,
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