Historical records, on the other hand,have Left a good picture of Cambodia's high-ranking officials , or Oknha ឧកញ៉ា included in their number were the Chaovay Srok and the officials surrounding the King, it is impossible to say how many Oknha there were at any given time, list of officials assembled in the 1860s and 1870s for the French are full of gaps and contradictions , many of the titles in these list do not appear to have been used and titles occurs in in other sources that do not appear in the lists , Roughly, however, there seem to have been about two Hundred Oknha in the Capital and the countryside throughout most of the nineteenth century, the number was probably smaller after defections to the Thai in the 1830s, and larger after Duang's accession, for these two Hundred men. about seven hundred titles were available for use, some of these, like those carried by the King's highest advisers and by most of the Chaovau srok, were always used, other seem to have lapsed,for awhile at least, after having been used by one or several incumbents.Everything
about the titles and the works associated with them,except the fact that they were conferred
on the incumbent by the King,was subject to adjustment, somethings a little carried a rank and sometimes it was associated with the job, such as maintaining the King's elephants guarding his regalia, or collecting taxes. certain titles were reserved for certain Srok , and the world Sauphea when it occurred in a title often implied judicial functions, but none of these rules was rigorously applied, favorites or people out of favor were given jobs to do or removed from them on an ad hoc basis, people went up the leader ( or fell off) quickly, for example, one official who function was to be in charge of the Throne room of the second King( hardly an arduous calling) was named to head a diplomatic mission to Bangkok in 1819, another, who duties were to survey the levels of rice in Royal storehouses, led an army against the Thai in Battambong in 1818, and list could be extended.
The titles that Oknha carried usually consisted of two or three honorific words, like Ratna (Jewel) or Verocana ("splendor")ភាពរុងរឿង drawn from Pali or Sanskrit, the Oknha received them along with the seals of office and insignia of rank (which included tiered umbrellas, betel containers, court costumes ,and the like) from the King's hands, in an intentionally awesome ceremony built around an oath of allegiance that had been in effect in more or less the same form for at least eight hundred years, at that time, and at regular intervals, the Oknha were excepted to give presents to the King, French writers equated this exchange of titles and gifts with the notion that Cambodian government was corrupt, because jobs were available only to the highest bidder, at one level of thinking this was true , but little ethical weight was given to the transaction- high bidders, after all, were people whose power had to be reckoned with twice a year the Oknha assembled at the royal Wat near the Palace
where they drank the Water of allegiance"ភក្កីភាព-water brought to the capital , in theory, from streams throughout the Kingdom- and renewed their oaths of allegiance to the King, failure to attend this ceremony was tantamount to treason.
Once in office, an Oknha became part of the Kamlang, or strength (ie entourage បិរវារ of some higher person, this might be one of the King's advisers, a member of the Royal family, or the King himself, a similar system was in effect in Siam, it is not clear whether these alliances were meant to check or to enhance the power of Oknha in questions- probably they served both purposes at one, the interconnections, between certain regions, official posts, family ties,and particular jobs in this period remain obscure , one manuscript chronicle, dating from the early nineteenth century, suggests that the land holding of Oknha in certain regions persisted from one generation to the next,even when the title of one Oknha were not passed along to his son, title among Oknha were not hereditary, even the successor to the throne was chosen, after a monarch's death, from among several eligible candidates, a similar fluidity affected Oknha family. although high status seems to have run in particular family.
Despite these continuities , there were few certainties in Cambodian political life, theoretically, the survival of an Oknha depended on the King, and Akin Rabibhadana cited a 1740 Thai decree that "a King can turn a superior person into a subordinate person and vice,versa , when he gives an order , it is like an axe from heaven in reality, however, a King's power depend on how recently he had attained it and how many outstanding debts he had, it was hampered in many case by poor communications between the capital and the srok.
A new King at the start of a dynasty, or after a period of exile, could often act like an "Axe from heaven" and fill Oknha positions with men who had been loyal to him in his climb to power , King Duang rewarded his followers in this way in the 1840s, as we shall see, just as the first King of the Chakri dynasty in Thailand (1782-) and Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam (1802-1945) rewarded theirs, under a weak King, on the other hand, or one entangled in long -standing obligations, perhaps to older people, Oknha tended to root themselves in the Srok and become more or less independent, in at least one Srok in the late nineteenth century, the Chaovay was selected by other officials there and given seals of office by the regional governor, or Chaomuang, who was Thai.
Uncertainty was an occupational hazard of Cambodian life, everyone was on the lookout against everyone else, and Oknha obligations toward his King, his Family, and his patrons sometimes overlapped and sometimes were in conflict, the other Oknha were potential allies and potential enemies alliance and betrayals that took advantage of existing power balances occupied a good deal of an Oknha's time.
Cambodia was not a bureaucratic Society, like China or Vietnam, and in times of peace and Oknha official duties were light, he had to wait upon his patron, there was little paperwork to do , and many tasks, like requisitioning supplies for the Palace or raising armies for defense (there was no standing army) were farmed out among several Oknha, perhaps to keep a single official from becoming too powerful and perhaps because there were no institutional mechanism to prevent ambitious Oknha from shouldering each other aside in search of profit.
The judgment implied in these remarks may be too strong, some Oknha were accomplished poets and musicians, and others were generous patrons of Buddhism and the arts, a few emerge from the chronicles as competent, innovative, or brave, but the uncertainty of favor, the ubiquity of rivals , and the unreliability of followers militated against an Oknha's being active or even attracting official notice, the Oknha and the people, then were tied to each other with bonds of terror, affection, duty, and contempt within the framework of the shared culture, in Cambodian terms, the system worked, but when theVietnamese tried to use the Oknha as their spokesmen in Cambodia in the 1830s, and 1840s,they found the Oknha incapable of governing the Country in a Vietnamese way- which is to say ,of administering regions ,conducting cadastral surveys, collecting taxes, and making detailed reports.
Aside from the King's five closets advisers, who formed a kind of cabinet, the most active and visible Oknha were the Chaovay Srok whose role as patrons in the countryside has been discussed, these men enjoyed considerable freedom and considerable power, they were authorized to collect taxes from their Srok, which meant that they had access to any surplus crops they could lay their hands on, and they were authorized to mobilize manpower for warfare or public work, in practice they maintained small private armies -rather like their counterparts, the riverine chieftains of nineteenth century Malaya, in populous Srok these armies sometime contained several thousand men, in others , they seem to have acted as bodyguards for the Chaovay Srok controlled the balance of power in the Kingdom, in fact ,they rarely acted collectively but individuals, responding to local interests and dyadic arrangements, this meant that a King could count on some Chaovay Srok but not on others and that invading armies might find some Chaovay friendly and others opposed to them.
Some Chaovay Srok were more important than others, five of them called Sdach Kranh ស្តេចក្រាញ់or King of of the field, were the highest-ranking Oknha and were responsible, in an unspecified way, foe the governance of several Srok at once, each grouping was known as Dei,or earth, unfortunately,nineteenth century references to the phrase Sdach Kranh occur only in French texts, and the meaning of Kranh itself is not clear, the officials seem to have acted as viceroys, or stand-ins for the King, in the performance of annual ceremonies in the five Dei honoring the Nak-Ta, they had the power to order executions, which the other Chaovay Srok did not, in a functional sense, they echoed the five high ministers around the King. these five ministers in the capital were led by a first minister, sometimes referred to as the Ta-La Ha, and included ministers of justice (Ob ba rach) of the armies (Chakrei)of navy and foreign trade (Krolahom) and of the Palace (Vang)each of these officials
maintained his own Komlang and probably had economic and patrimonial links with certain Sruk loosely defined territorial responsibilities of these men overlapped or extend those of the Sdach-Kranh and the Chaovay Srok, as well as those of certain members of the Royal Family,who were also
entitled to 'consume" particular regions, in time of stress , as several chronicles reveal. Oknha retreated to there villages, where they had relatives and land, despite these regional links, however, the high-ranking Oknha spent their time close to the King, except in war, when some of them were called on to recruit troops and act as generals in the field, there careers were tied to the fortunes of the King, their effect on life in the countryside is not clear, the Palace-oriented chronicles probably exaggerate the importance of these men, and so did the Vietnamese when they looked for people to help them centralize and tidy up Cambodian government in 1830s.
The last government of Cambodian Society that came between the villagers and their King consisted of other members of the Royal family ,in theory, there could be hundreds of these , for King were traditionally polygamous, but in nineteenth century a series of deaths and coincidences sharply reduced their number, King Eng, who died in his twenties had no surviving brothers and only five children, the oldest of these, Prince Chan, came to the throne when he was only six, when he died more than thirty years later, he left four daughters but no sons, his three brothers ( the fourth had died as a child) went to Bangkok in 1812 and stayed there, with brief exceptions, until Chan's death in 1835, this meant that for most of his reign Chan was the only male member of Royal family living in Cambodia, the factionalism and jockeying for position, a conventional feature of Cambodian court life before and since, took place off- stage, in Siam , and in the late 1830s, in the Cambodian Srok under Thai control.
The Cambodian King, at the pinnacle of Society, was remote from his subjects ,scholars have argued that this remoteness was expected of an Asian King, he was to rule by his largely invisible example, just as the son shone, and he was to act as the custodian of a fund of merit and power- viewed perhaps as an interlocking, expendable commodity that he had accumulated in previous existences en route to the throne, what has sometimes been called the "purely" religious or symbolic importance of Kingship in Southeast Asia, as transmitted in Indianized texts ,has been overstressed , the frontiers between political and religious actions and institutions were neither sharply delimited nor especially important, in their daily lives, Kings were as concerned with mere . survival as with their religious roles, nonetheless, it would be incorrect to blot out the religious importance of Kingship with evidence however easy to assemble-of a given King's fallibility, having a King was indispensable, according to the Ramayana, a country without a King enjoys , neither rain nor seed, neither wealth nor wife, neither sacrifices nor festivals , and alarm of the Oknha in 1840 -1841 when the Cambodia was briefly without a monarch shows how deeply ingrained these notions were , only a King was empowered to hand out the official titles,seals of office, and insignia of rank that held the Cambodian
official class together one Cambodian Law even started that an official with a seal did not need to be obeyed.
In additional t setting Cambodia's official class in motion an action that had no consistent effect on Village life the Cambodian monarch,like his counterparts elsewhere in Southeast Asia, also presided over a series of partly brahmanical. partly Buddhist, and partly animistic ceremonies that from the Villagers point of views defined the boundaries of his merit and limits of the agricultural year, these were closely related to the success of their harvests these ceremonies included one's that honored the King's ancestors and the Nak-Ta, ones inaugurating and closing the rice-growing cycle,and ones that marked off stages of the Buddhist and solar calendars, in many of them the King was assisted by court Brahmans" called Baku who also acted as guardians of his regalia the sacred sword, arrows and other objects that he handled once in his lifetime, at his coronation it is impossible to decide if the regalia were"political" or Religious" without them, a monarch could rule hanging out tittles ,raising armies, and so forth but he could not reign, he had not been consecrated, as Prince Duang discovered in the 1840s, when the Vietnamese with the regalia peace terms from the Thai.
The monarch's power's,then although perhaps overstressed in the written record remained considerable in the eye of Oknha and among the common people, the absence of monarch was felt,
at many points in the Society, perhaps more acutely than his presence on the throne.
The end of Oknha.
