Probably the least-recorded period of Cambodia history falls between Chou-Ta-Kuan's visit to Angkor and the restoration of some of the temples there by a Cambodia King name Chan in the 1550s and 1560s.the two intervening centuries witnessed major,permanent shifts in Cambodia's economy,its foreign relations ,its language,and probably although this is harder to verify-the structure,values,and performance of Cambodian-Society,evidence about these shifts that can be traced to the period itself,however,is very thin,when the amount of evidence increases and becomes reliable around 1550 or so,many of the shifts ការផ្លាស់ប្តូរ had already taken place.
Evidence from the period consists largely of Chinese references to Cambodia,for almost no inscriptions appear to have been carved ចារិក,on stone at least,inside the Kingdom between the middle of fourteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth,other source include a Cham inscription and some from Thailand,two Thai chronicles from the seventeenth century,one of them very fragmentary,probably contain some accurate information about events in these two hundred years, The Cambodian chronicles that purportedly deal with this period appear to have been drawn for the most part from folklore and from Thai chronicle traditions, and unlike those dealing with events after 1550, they are impossible to corroborate បញ្ជាក់ឬអះអាងfrom other source.
The shift from Angkor to Phnompenh
The Chinese evidence is important ,for as Michael Vickery has convincingly argued,the shifts in Cambodia's geographical center of gravity in the fourteenth century were probably connected with the rapid expansion of Chinese maritime trade with Southeast Asia,and particularly with the mainland,under the Mongols and the early Ming. More than a dozen tributary mission were sent from Cambodia to China between 1371 and 1419-more than throughout the entire Angkorean period-and although some of these may have been purely ceremonial,it seems likely that they came primarily to trade and to arrange for trade,the number of mission,and the respect accorded them by the Chinese, indicate not only that Cambodia remained active and powerful during this period but also that the Cambodian elite, perhaps now less rigidly tied to religious foundations and ceremonial duties of Brahmanical bureaucracy,were eager to exploit the possibility of commercial relations with China,how and why this shift in their thinking and behavior occurred is impossible to ascertain,but both Vickery and Oliver -Wolter have held that the shift should not necessarily be connected with the notion of "Decline"for as Wolter has remarked,"perhaps we have become too ready to regard the decline of Angkor in fourteenth,and fifteenth centuries as being on a catastrophicគ្រោះមហន្តរាយ scale,indeed,throughout this period,rulers inside the present-day frontiers of Cambodia were able to compete for resources and trade with their new and convince the Chinese of their continuing importance and were occasionally able,well into the seventeenth century,to defeat the Thai in War.
Because this shift of emphasis was accompanied by so few"Angkorean"activities (such as stone temple construction,inscriptions,and expanded irrigation works),authors have often spoken"
Decline:where" change" would be more appropriate,for another,the world suggests that Jayavarman VII,for example,was in some ways a more authentically Cambodian King than the Theravada one observed in 1296 by Chou Ta-Kuan,some authors have connected the abandonment of Angkor-historical event that probably took place in the 1440s,with a national failure of nerve and certainly with major losses of population.such losses,the argument runs,would have made it impossible to maintain irrigation works at Angkor,and the water,becoming stagnant,could have become a breeding place of malarial mosquitoes ,further depleting the population in a spiraling process,still others have argued that Theravada Buddhism was in some was subversive of Angkorean cohesionសិនិទ្ធពល while it invigorated the politics of Ayudhya and Pagans in Burma,the "Peaceable" nature of this variant of the religion has been used to explain Cambodian defeats,but not its victories or those of the Thai who shared the same beliefs.
What emerges from the evidence is that Cambodia was becoming post-Angkorean well before the abandonment of Angkor,Angkorean institutionsស្ថានប័ន -inscriptions,stone temples ,a Hindu-oriented Royal Family and extensive irrigation,to name only four traditions-seem to have stopped,faded or been redirected soon after the conversion of the Cambodian elite to Theravada Buddhism,an event that probably took place not long after Jayavarman VII's death,it would be premature to see these changes as springing uniquely or event primarily from the ideology or content of the new religion, it is more likely that they were related to the rise of Ayudhya to the west and to the entanglement ការប្រទាក់គ្នា which was to last until the 1860s.between the Thai and Cambodia courts,people,Idea,Texts, and Institutions migrated west from Angkor to Ayadhya,where the were modified and eventually reexported into Cambodia to survive its genuine decline from the eighteen century onward, much of this migration wold have consisted of prisoners of war,including entire families swept off the west after successive Thai invasions of Angkor,the most important occurring in 1431,as this process was going on.people and institutions were also migrating southward to the vicinity of Phnompenh,where the Capital of Cambodia was to remain for the next six hundred years.
The suitability of Phnompenh as a site for a Cambodian Capital sprang in large part from its location at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap,a fortified city at this point-The "Four Faces" could control the river in-trade from from Lao as well as trade in rough pottery,Dried-fish,and Fish-Sauce from Tole-Sap, to say nothing of coming goods -Primarily Chinese in origin-approaching from the Mekong Deltas. still largely inhabited by Khmer,one the choice had been made to become a trading Kingdom-and it is impossible to say when,how,or why this happened-locating the Cambodian capital at Angkor no longer made much sense.
It is likely that the shift of the capital also represented a momentary truimph.later legitimized and prolonged ពន្យាពេល,of regional interests, and perhaps those of an individual overlord,at the expense of people lingering near Angkor or gathering strength in the Menam Basin to the West, these members of the Southeast Cambodian elite for these interests took the form of chiefs and their following,rather than rice farmers singly or en masse- probably took advantage of their distance from Ayudhya to trade with China on their own account,it seem likely,also,that they could rely on support from overlords long entrenched in the religion,which was the heartland of "Funan"aa area where Angkorean writ had often been ignored.
but these are suppositions,it seems more certain that the myth connected with the founding of Phnompenh,which tells of an old woman's discovery of a Buddha image floating miraculously-downstream, was concocted after the city had come to life,under a name that has survived into modern Khmer as Chatomuk or Four faces- an interesting echo of the iconography of the Bayon.
The role [played by foreigners adept at trade in this new city is difficult to asses,but influential figures probably included speakers of Malay,from Champa or the Indonesian islands,or who left such words behind in Cambodian language as Kompong or landing place' and "Psaar or maket, as well as several bureaucratic titles and adeministrative terms,the Malay legacy may indeed have been deeper than this and needs to be explored,for seventeenth century European descriptions of riverine Cambodia, and the way its politics were organized, strongly resemble descriptions from this era and letter of riverine Malaya.other foreigners active in Phnompenh were the Chinese,already busily trading at Angkor in thirteenth century,there were three thousand of them in Phnompenh in the 1540s,it seem likely that Chinese and Malay traders and their descendants married into Cambodian elite just as the Chinese continued to do in the colonial era,tightening the relationships between The King,his entourage,and commercial profits.
By the late fifteenth century, it seem, the social organization bureaucracy,and economic priorities of Angkor-bas on the importance of irrigation,forced labor,and the primacy of a priestly caste-were no longer strong enough or relevant enough to balance the human costs of maintaining a Cambodian capital at Angkor,new forms of organization new settlement patterns.and new priorities for the elite based in part on foreign trade became feasible and attractive,if we view Angkor from this perspective rather than in terms of a collapse,it is not surprising that the city was not re-occupied and made a capital again.even in periods when Cambodian King may have thought of doing so,as in the late sixteenth century.
Some of the reasons for the change have already been suggested.another element conducive to it might be called the emulation សារម្ភfactor affecting both Phnompenh( and other capital nearby) and Ayudhya,these were newly established trading Kingdoms respectful-but perhaps little wary-of idea of Angkor ,by the 1400s,Ayudhya and these Cambodian City looked to each other rather than to a Brahmanical past for exemplary behavior,until the end of the sixteenth century.moreover,
Phnompenh (Lon-vek or Udong)and Ayudhya" considered themselves,not separate polities ,but participants in a hybrid culture ,the mixture contained elements of Hinduized Kingship,traceable to Angkor,and Theravada monarchic accessibility,traceable to the Mon-Kingdom of Davaravati,perhaps,which had precised Theravada Buddhism for almost a thousand years,as well as remnants of paternalistic បិតុនិយម,village-oriented leadership traceable to the ethnic forerunners of the Thai, tribal peoples from the mountains of Southern China,in both Societies the Buddhist Sangha,or monastic order, was accessible ,in its lower reaches at least,to ordinary people,brought into contact with each other through wars,immigration,and a share religion,the Thai and the Khmer blended with each other and developed differently from their separate forebears.
This blending was rarely peaceful,both Kingdoms estimated political strength in terms of controlling manpower rather territory and interpreted such strength( and tributary payment s) as evidence of Royal merit and prestige,the Thai would have learned from the Khmer,and vice verse, to a large extent via prisoners of war.between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth century there were frequent wars,generally west of the Mekong,between the Cambodians and the Thai, these laid waste the regions through which invading and retreating armies marched and invasions usually coincided with periods of weakness in the areas that were invaded.in the 1570s,for example,after Ayudhya had been sacked by a Burmese army,several Cambodian expeditions were mounted against Siam.
The end of part 1 Cambodia after Angkor.
