It would be wrong to suggest that seventeenth century Cambodia Society can be understood in terms of timelessness, in many ways, it differed from its nineteenth century counterpart,for example, nineteenth century Cambodia had been brought to its knees by foreign powers ,seventeenth century was still reasonably independent,Nineteenth century Cambodia was isolated from the outside world by the same two powers_Siam and Vietnam, that dominated its internal politics, seventeenth century Cambodia on the other hand,traded freely with many countries, also the elite Cambodian literary tradition, enshrined in local version of of the Ramayana, the Ream-Ke ,as well as in the inscriptions at Angkor-Wat and other works, was as we shall see ,far more vigorous in seventeenth century than in the Nineteenth.
Saveros Pou attributed these changes in part to Thai fluency but more profoundly to what she referred to as a "slow degradation of values from the seventeenth century on"is is easy to share the impression
after reading the Ream-Ke. along side some of the fatuous verse-novels composed in the 1880s or after comparing the seventeenth century legal Codes, translated by Adhe'mard lecle're, with the scattered and tortuous documents left by nineteenth century Kings, although the values she referred to emanated from the elite ,Pou saw the decline as one that altered the collective acceptance of traditional values ,she saw these values , in turn, as linked with Buddhist notions of the cosmos (enshrined in the didactic poem known as the "Trai-Phum" or three words" especially as these filtered into Buddhist teaching in oral form, enshrined in the aphoristic collection of "Law" or Chbab" until very recently memorized by Cambodian schoolchildren, in other words ,she viewed seventeenth century Cambodia as a nation abiding by rules that were later watered down, abused or forgotten.
These values -seldom in fact acted out by a particular monarch-are those that delineate proper conduct for the people, this conduct has to do in large part with one's position in society and Governs the way one relates to others, everyone ,of course,come equipped with several positions, being at the same time older than some and younger than others, richer and poorer, wiser and more foolish, and so on, an elderly"inferior" is to be addressed with respect,for example ,so is a younger monk, and a monk of peasant origin,in theory at least,it to be paid home age by a King ,in many cases ,moreover, one person's patron is someone else's client.
The "Chbab " stress several normative relationships of this kind, the most important of which are probably those with parents and teachers, according to the Chbab , these authority figures convey material to be memorized, there is nothing to discuss, the teacher's relation to the student ,like so many relationships in Cambodian Society, is lopsided the teacher, liken parent, bestows transmits and
commands, the student, like the child, receives, accept and obeys, nothing changes in the transmission process ,except perhaps the ignorance of the student knowledge is passed on from student to student over generations ,and if this involves little or so "Progress" we should recall that the idea of progress is not especially widespread and was not well known in precolonial Southeast Asia, what kept Society coherent, Cambodians thought , was the proper observance of relationships among people as well as the shared acceptance of Buddhist ideology, the first of these involved proper language and appropriate behavior, the Khmer language, like many other and in Southeast Asia ( Javanese is perhaps the best example), displays differences between people in the pronouns they use in speaking to each other and, in exalted speech( used to describe royally or Monks for example), in many verbs and nouns are well ,except among close friends not otherwise related ( for relatives,family-oriented pronouns would normally by used) no world in traditional Khmer translated readily as 'you 'or I ,instead ,words emphasized the statues of the speaker in relation to the person
addressed, thus'you' could be directed'up' or 'down as could I' and the other personal pronouns.
Cambodian thicker also saw the universe in graded terms.with people inhabiting "middle earth" this is familiar concept in many culture, and so is its corollary, that behavior on earth has been prescribed by heroes who have passed "above' or below" us, to those of us accustomed to expanded (or fragmented) frames of reference ,this picture of the world entails enslavement or mystification, to scholars like Saveros Pou, however, and , it would seem, to the poets who composed the Ream-Ke ( The Glory of Rama ") the picture offered little to complain about in moral or aesthetic terms, perhaps there is a relationship between the day-to day dangers of a Society and the energy of belief that its thinkers invest in otherworldly or exceptional beautiful alternatives , but to say this is to suggest that the Ream-Ke is essentially a vehicle by which to escape Society, its authors and many of its listeners , on the other hand might say that the poem was an excellent vehicle for understanding it.
Egalitarian ideals and the related notion of class warfare have perhaps eroded our sympathies for hierarchical នៃឋានានុក្រម Society, which in twentieth-century terms themselves ephemeral ,of course-appear to make no sense we think of Society as being at war with itself, or at peace, brushing up against other Society with different interests, and so on, seventeenth century Cambodians had no word for "Society" at all the word "Sangkhum" appears to have entered the language via "Pali in the 1930s, they preferred to think of themselves in terms of the King and his subjects, in terms of a spectrum of relative merit, or as people, scattered over time and space, sharing recognizable ideals that sprang, in turn, from being farmers, being lowly,being Buddhists, and speaking Khmer .
Perhaps the best way to enter the thought world of seventeenth century Cambodia is to look at the Ream-Ke itself, the version that has survived contains only some of events related in the Indian original, and many of these have been altered to fit into Theravada Buddhist frame of reference and in to Khmer, although its characters inhabit a recognizably Indian, Brahmani-cal world ( as well as half mythical Kingdom far away ,it seem from Southeast Asia) their behavior, language, and ideals are very much those of the Cambodian people who assembled to listen to the poem or to watch it enacted by dancers, poets, and musicians, these additional dimensions resemble the way in which medieval and renaissance painters in Europe depicted Greek and Bibi-cal figures wearing European clothes
The plot of the Ream-Ke can be easily summarized, sent out in disgrace from the Kingdom he was about to inherit,Prince Ream (Rama), accompanied by his wife,Sita, and his younger brother,Leak(Laksmana) travels in the forest and has many adventures until Sita is taken away by the Wicked Prince Reab (Ravana), who rules the City of Langka-Aided by the Prince of Monkeys, Hanuman, Ream attacks Langka hoping to regain his wife, and and wins a series of battles ,here the narrative breaks off , in terms of plot alone, it is difficult to understand the hold the Ream-Ke has had for so long on the Cambodian imagination,its language is often terse, and the development of the action is occasionally obscure, this is partly because the poem has come down to us as a series of fairly brief episodes, each suitable for mime (with the verse to be recited ) and geared to a performance by dancers or leather shadow puppets.
In modern times, episodes from the poem were often enacted by the Palace dancers , in the countryside, events from the poem were acted out as a part of village festival, a complete oral version, somewhat different from the printed , was recorded in Siam-Reap in 1969, the relation of these Cambodian poems to other versions elsewhere in Southeast Asia is an important issue that remains to be explored.
What probably captivated so many Cambodians about the Ream-Ke was its combination of elegance and familiarity, its subject the conflict of good and evil is the theme of much epic literature, on one level the poem is a statement of Theravada Buddhist values ,on another, a defense between what is wild (Prey) and what is civilized , the poem, in a sense, is itself a civilizing act, just as the Japanese word for "Chronicle" (Babad) is derived from one that means to "clear the forest" Goodness in poem and its three heroes are linked to meritorious action and elegance characters are unpredictable, passionate, in disarray , the contrast is by no means mechanical, however, and is worked out in the course of the poem with considerable subtlety ,the savage ruler of the forest ,Kukham.for example ,is filthy and spontaneous but is redeemed by his meritorious deference to Ream ,on the other hand, Reab, the prince of Langka, consumed with passion and a slave to it , is almost as royal and at times nearly as elegance as Ream and Sita.
The role played by the Ream-Ke in pre-revolutionary Cambodia resemble the one enjoyed by Wayang ,or shadow-puppet theater, in Java and Bali, many Cambodians, in their occasional encounters with the poem, pound in it a completeness and balance probably missing from their everyday lives, good and evil as well all can see , are at war, and evil is often victorious, in the poem, however, the two are perpetually in balance, held in place, as it were, by almost equal quantities of ornamental verse, in the strophes that have survived, the major actors are never destroyed , perhaps because evil and good must survive in order to define each other, in the Ream-Ke, as in many of the poems enacted in Wayang "nothing happens" nothing important is different from one end of the poem to the other, certainly nothing changes or turns around , the poem is useless as a revolutionary text, and it is also useless ,in narrow sense,a as historical document, because we can not locate it in a particular time and place , its verbal elegance and its austerity, however, allow us a glimpse of the seventeenth century Cambodian elite's range of values and of a high artistic polish that would be difficult to associate with a period of intellectual decline
Placed against what we know of events in the seventeenth century, the gap between ideals and reality, as expressed in the poem, is wide and deep, chronicles and European source reveal a country whose capital was isolated from its hinterland,whose royal family was murderous, intriguing អ្នកមានគំនិត
កិច្ចកល and unstable ,and which was at the mercy ,much of the time, of elite factions national catastrophes,and invaders , the persistence of Cambodian elite, however, and the continuity of overseas trade suggest that these crises, real enough at the time, were periodic rather than perpetual and affected the parts of the country that armies moved across rather than those outside their paths.
A revealing social document from this period is a collection of fifty anecdotes, allegedly provided by an elderly female member of royal family when a new set of Cambodian lew codes was promulgated in the 1690s, these deal with the notion of Lese Majeste' and thus concern the position of royalty in Cambodian Society, they also reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Cambodian Kingship at this time , the King's greatest strength, it seems, sprang from his capacity to assign and revoke titles, which were permissions to exploit people less fortunately endowed, offenders against the King could be stripped of their possessions , and crimes of Lese Majeste', even at several removes,were severely dealt with, one anecdote, for example, relates how a princess ordered her adverser to find some fish, the officials encountered a fisherman, who muttered that they had no right to take his fish without paying for them. the officials took they fish and informed the princess about him, and he was find-ed for disrespect, another anecdote relates that King, out hunting, wandered from his entourage and encountered a buffalo tender, who addressed him in ordinary language, instead of finishing the man , the King returned to his followers to declare that he had increased his fund of merit ,as he had obeyed the law that did not allow a King to punish subjects for disrespect outside the Palace" If I had shot the man when I was alone" he said " I would have done a prohibited thing, and after my death , I would have fallen into hell, because after all , the man didn't know that I was the King"other anecdotes reveal that the monarch was often used by ordinary citizens as the court of last resort, as Chou Ta Kuan had suggested in the thirteenth century.
There anecdotes differ from the chronicle and from the Ream-Ke by providing day-to-day information about the King,they provided a picture of a variegated, conservative ,and hierarchically organized Society ,consisting of a few thousand privileged men and women, propped up by an almost invisible wall of rice farmers, in which great emphasis was placed on rank and privilege and on behavior thought to be appropriate to one's statues ,the texts also reveal how perilous it was to enjoy power in seventeenth century Cambodia. the King ruled through changeable networks of favorites and relations ,and he governed in many cases ,it would seem ,by pique, officials rose into favor and fell from one day to the next, a chronicle from this period, for example ,relates that a royal elephant trainer was named minister of war( Chakri ចក្រី) after saving the King's life while hunting, a European minister, on the other hand,fell from office for having struck a monk who had inadvertently splashed water on his cloak, although the Society was permanently ranked ,change
was possible and could rarely be predicted.
The end of Cambodia ,Values in Seventeenth Century
