Cambodia's aristocracy, such as this richly adorned Khmer princess, traveled sometimes by carriage or on elephant back, but more often by palanquin, borne by palace servants and shielded from the sun by an ornate canopy. The passenger reposed in a hammock of folded cloth, hung from intricately carved wooden shafts by gilt-bronze hooks and rings such as the example shown here. In Cambodia's class-conscious society, every detail of the palanquin and its attendants denoted the passenger's rank. The degree of ornamentation on the ring supporting the hammock was one signal, the shafts' material another. A significant token of rank was the parasol, and the palanquin of an important person would be preceded and followed by as many footmen bearing parasols as was accorded. On ceremonial occasions, the Khmer king was borne on a golden palanquin preceded by officials carrying twenty parasols and by a herald ringing a bell—the command for onlookers to prostrate themselves. The highest dignitaries were permitted a palanquin with gold-plated shafts and four parasols with golden handles. Lesser officials had fewer parasols, those silver handled, and palanquins with silver-plated shafts.
Tary. The Angkorean heartland, however, was now a well-developed agricultural zone. From the lofty towers of Angkor Thom, the king of Cambodia could survey a carefully planned landscape extending as far as the eye could see—a gentle, sloping plain dotted with temples and settlements, and marked out like a checkerboard with a vast network of rivers, canals, and flooded rice fields.
Here, in and around the metropolis, at least half a million people—perhaps a quarter of the total Khmer population—lived by farming, and by fishing the abundantly stocked waters of the Mekong and the great lake of Tonie Sap to the south. In Angkor, as in Pagan, no one knew hunger. Every free citizen had at least one or two hectares to cultivate, and except for the unpredictable intrusion of disease or conscription for military service, life was not harsh.
The gap between poor and rich was nonetheless great. In Angkor's social pyramid the hereditary king stood at the apex. Beneath him was a ruling elite of hereditary royal priests whose families made up a provincial aristocracy. The prominent families of the provinces had in the past been kings in their own right, and even in the twelfth century, they felt they had rights over the Khmer throne—which they exercised principally by marrying their daughters to the king. The priesthood was itself graded: The royal chaplain came near the top, with assorted scholars, astrologers, poets, and ritual sacrificers further down. It was from the ranks of the priesthood that the professional civil service, the daily administrators of the affairs of state, were drawn. The priests enshrined the power of the king, enforced the laws, and kept out all pretenders to power from the lower orders.
A long way below the priests came the trade guilds of craftworkers and skilled artisans; and below them were the army officers and village heads who commanded the local militia in the provinces and who, in time of war, were expected to place their peasant forces at the disposal of the army. Then came the overwhelming majority of the Khmer population: the farmers who cleared the forests, tilled the land, cultivated the rice, and after the harvests had been gathered in, paid labor service to the king by helping to build great temples, palaces, and public works.
Armed with nets, pots, and spears, Cambodians mount a nocturnal fishing expedition on the great lake of Tonie Sap, near the Mekong River. The size of the catch was determined by the rhythm of the seasons, since each year as the summer monsoon flood waters receded, Tonie Sap became an enormous natural trap—a squirming stew of carp, gudgeon, and tench. Working mainly by night, the fishermen used torches made from palm leaves to lure the shoals toward the dugout canoes.
The peasants, however, were not quite the lowest of the low. Beneath them were three categories of slaves. There were prisoners of war from campaigns in Burma and Champa, and in the small Mon and Thai states; primitive tribespeople rounded up in raids in the forests and mountains; and native-born Khmers, temporarily enslaved in punishment for misdemeanors or as a way of paying off debts. Slaves usually labored at the most arduous and unsavory jobs, such as the building of temples and aqueducts. However, many also filled specialized roles, whether as cooks, librarians, gardeners, dancers, scribes, flower collectors, or musicians. Some Khmers voluntarily accepted slavery as an expression of religious sacrifice: These volunteers were normally assigned to temple maintenance.
In theory, the king exercised absolute power over this social pyramid. Indeed, he was extolled in court literature as a man who excelled all others in all ways—as a veritable superman credited with the strength to lift ten wrestlers simultaneously. In reality, however, his possession of the throne depended on the support of the regional lordly families, especially those related to his mother and his principal wife. Occasionally, a king might be overthrown in a palace revolution, but never by someone outside the ranks of the aristocracy. Always the new monarch came from the ruling class of priests.
Despite the king's vulnerability to aristocratic rivals, he remained inviolate in the
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Eyes of the ordinary people. A godlike figure, he left his Angkor palace on ceremonial occasions accompanied by cavalry, massed bands, princes and ministers of state on elephants, and thousands of palace maidens, some armed with shields and lances, others brandishing flaming torches or candles and bearing utensils of gold and silver. The king's wives and concubines, shaded by gold-flecked parasols, rode in chariots, in howdahs on elephant back, or in litters borne on men's shoulders. The king himself, surrounded by troops of soldiers, stood on the back of a magnificently caparisoned elephant whose tusks were sheathed in gold; as the king passed by, the crowds knelt down and touched their foreheads to the ground.
The courtiers shared much of the king's magnificence. The aristocrats who dwelt within Angkor Thom employed at least one hundred slaves per household and dined from gold and silver tableware. Their wooden residences, roofed with tiles, were furnished with rugs imported from China, with skins of tiger, panther, or deer, with bronze thrones, low tables, and embroidered curtains. Carved friezes of floral designs decorated the walls, and vases of flowers scented the air. The aristocracy swathed their bodies in Chinese silks and brocades, dressed their hair in elaborate chignons, and perfumed themselves with sandalwood or musk.
Zhou Daguan, a Chinese envoy, resided in Angkor for one year in the late thirteenth century and kept a copious record of his experiences. He saw Angkor just after its peak, but his observations were often highly prejudiced, for, like most Chinese, he viewed all foreigners as barbarians. He did, however, acknowledge that Khmer court life was refined and sophisticated.
Peasant life was infinitely simpler; Zhou judged it to be somewhat primitive. Both men and women wore only a simple rectangle of cloth wrapped around the waist and became deeply tanned by the sun. They lived in stilt houses walled and floored with bamboo slats and thatched with palm leaves. Recording his impressions of a typical Khmer home, Zhou wrote: "The ordinary people have a house, but without table, bench, basin, or bucket. They simply use a clay pot for cooking rice and make the sauce on an earthen stove. They bury three stones for the hearth and help themselves to dishes by using the shell of a coconut as a ladle. The rice is served on Chinese plates of earthenware or copper, and they help themselves to the sauce with leaves of which they make small cups. For spoons, they use smaller leaves that can be thrown away when they have finished. For sleeping, they use only bamboo mats, and they also sleep on the floorboards."
For the peasants, social life centered around the communal meal. Zhou described this repast as "simple," although he went on to describe a varied and appetizing diet. The staple foods were rice and fish—perhaps gudgeon, shad, carp, eel, or shark— supplemented by pork, venison, prawns, shellfish, turtle, vegetables, and fruit. There were also alcoholic drinks made from fermented honey, sugarcane, rice, and leaves.
The ordinary people had plenty of diversions. Snake charmers, storytellers, minstrels, and dwarfs provided endless entertainment on the streets of towns and villages. Elephant, hog, and cock fighting were always popular spectacles. Individual sports such as boxing, wrestling, and archery had many adherents, as did various team activities, including ball games and a form of polo. Moreover, every month saw a public gala or major religious ceremony, and the New Year in October was celebrated with a two-week-long festival climaxed by a firework display.
Another social pleasure—almost mandatory in Cambodia's sticky climate—was bathing. There were no bathhouses in Angkor, but freshwater pools and moats and
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Canals were all about, and in this aquatic civilization it was usual for almost everyone to make at least one weekly excursion to a nearby river. This was a joyful occasion and a picturesque scene: The lotus blossom flourished in the pools of Angkor, and exotic birds such as rosy pelicans, bronze ibis, and purple heron stalked the river-banks. But Zhou did not entirely approve. So much bathing, he felt, was surely bad for the health. Worse, the women "have no shame about leaving their clothes on the riverbank and going into the water."
Zhou considered Khmer women to be very passionate and Khmer society to be dissolute. Girls, he reported, were allowed a premarital liaison with their future husbands, and married women felt entitled to be unfaithful if their husbands were away from home for more than ten days—as often happened in time of war. "I am not a spirit," a neglected wife would say. "How then may I sleep by myself?" On the other hand, as Zhou reported, if a wife were caught committing adultery, her husband could lawfully crush her lover's legs between two stone blocks until the lover had agreed to hand over all his possessions in compensation.
Marriage remained a highly respected institution, for sexual union was seen to have a social purpose far beyond purely personal pleasure. It was regarded as a symbolic rite necessary to ensure the continuing fertility of the land as well as of the population. Responsibility in this respect weighed especially on the prowess of the king. Every night, whether he liked it or not, one of his palace courtesans would come to his bedchamber. Any failure to comply with this amorous routine would have been considered fatal for the well-being of the nation.
The Khmer Potter's Cratt
While the richest Khmers prized translucent Chinese porcelain, the merely affluent acquired less refined, but inventive, glazed wares by local potters. Made from coarse materials, built up in coils or thrown on a wheel, the pots were often shaped as stylized animals and colored with copper or iron oxides for a green, brown, or black surface. Owls, elephants, and rabbits—such as at right—were favorite subjects. The Khmers linked elephants with kingship and warfare, but the forms of owls and rabbits were simply liked. Cats were also portrayed; popular pets in Southeast Asia, they killed rats in the rice barns.
Large pots by Khmer potters stored water, grain, and oil; small pots held powdered mineral lime, which was chewed with betel leaves, a stimulant producing a sense of well-being.
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At the time of Zhou's stay, the king of Cambodia had five wives—"one for his private apartment and the other four for the four points of the compass. As for his concubines and girls of the palace, I have heard their number estimated at between three and five thousand, divided into several classes." In addition, a royal troupe of dancing girls was permanently on call, retained mostly to reenact stories or scenes from the Hindu epics in the presence of the royal family.
According to Zhou, the noblewomen, especially those of priestly families, occupied a prominent place in Khmer society. Not only did they marry kings; some, by force of their personality and intellect, achieved positions of state in their own right. Never venturing outdoors without a shaded palanquin or a parasol of red Chinese taffeta, the ladies of the aristocracy preserved the paleness of their complexions: "white as jade," Zhou called them.
The Chinese envoy was less complimentary about Khmer women of the lower orders. "The women here age very quickly," he observed, "probably because they marry and have children before they are old enough. At twenty or thirty, they look as old as Chinese ladies of forty or fifty. But then it is they who do the work, who attend to commerce. If a Chinese upon arriving here takes a wife, it is, among other things, to profit from her commercial aptitudes. Each day the market opens at six and closes at noon. There are no little shops in which people live, but they use a kind of straw mat, which they spread on the ground. Each has her own spot. I have heard tell that they pay the authorities for their pitches. In the smaller transactions, the payment
This elephant vessel has the rounded form of much Khmer pottery. The opening is in the center of the howdah that rests on the beast's back.
Is rice, cereals, and Chinese objects; next are cloth goods; and for large transactions, gold and silver are used."
Overall, from his male perspective, Zhou viewed Angkor with some favor: "Rice is plentiful, women easy to find, the houses easy to manage, property easy to manage, and business good." But, he stressed, there were darker sides to Cambodian life. Certain household slaves—aborigines captured from the mountain solitudes—were treated rather like animals by their Khmer owners. Tropical diseases were rife; Zhou mentioned leprosy, but cholera, typhoid, and malaria were also probably common. The forests beyond the civilized center of the realm were full of perils: crocodiles straying from the swamps, leeches, tigers, wild buffaloes, and bandits.
At the time when Zhou was committing his judgments on Angkor society to paper, the great civilization of Pagan was crumbling; Angkor itself was under threat, although it would not really succumb until the fifteenth century. Both cultures owed their disintegration partly to their architectural extravagance, which left very little money in the treasury to defend the state against foreign attackers. But the downfall of the two great temple states was due in even greater measure to fundamental weaknesses in their power structures.
In Pagan, the flaw was the hold the Buddhist church possessed over the monarchy. The kings of Pagan, responding to the Buddhist emphasis on generosity, persisted in giving huge tracts of land to the Sangha who—unlike private individuals—were not
These two jars take the form of a pair of whimsical cats—the one frowning, the other wearing a mischievous grin.
Subject to taxation. Thus the kings sacrificed large sources of revenue that were needed to fuel the military. Occasionally a king, recognizing his exposure, would accuse the Sangha of becoming worldly and take back some of the land that had been granted. But the kings were also thwarted in their budget-balancing efforts by tax-dodging individuals who would pretend to donate land to the Sangha while secretly arranging that it should reach the hands of a particular monk; when he died, the land would revert to the original owner.
In 1270, Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China, sent three ambassadors to Burma to demand homage. When his envoys failed to return, he launched a series of retaliatory raids that culminated in all-out invasion and the occupation of Pagan in 1287. Thereafter, although many of its finer brick-built temples and pagodas survived, the once-mighty capital soon became a mere village.
It is unlikely that the kingdom of Pagan, even at the height of its military power, could have resisted the armies of Kublai Khan. But the Chinese invasion accelerated the disintegration of a state already faced with rebellion by the Mon of Lower Burma and by rival chieftaincies in the north. Unlike Angkor, which was dependent on the support of powerful regional families, the Pagan state tried to keep its Burmese empire strictly under central control. When the capital was lost, the entire state fell apart.
In Angkor, as in Pagan, the economy was seriously weakened by the twelfth-century spending spree on new temples. While the Khmer were preoccupied with building, a new threat was growing on their western frontier. The Thai, a dynamic highland people driven south by the Chinese, had crossed the mountain regions of Laos and Upper Burma and were expanding their territory in the region of the Menam basin, which had long been under Khmer suzerainty. In 1431, after two centuries of intermittent fighting, the Thai overran the Cambodian heartland; the following year the great capital of Angkor was abandoned to the jungle.
Even before the final onslaught, Khmer civilization had been gravely weakened by civil war. Angkor's fundamental problem lay in the division of power among so many regional lordly families, all with royal connections. In about 1430, the death of a Cambodian king had resulted in a fierce contest for the succession and the defection of many powerful nobles and priests. When the Thai invaded, the capital had already lost its authority over its outlying provinces; and after the fall of Angkor, Cambodia plunged into total chaos as long-running dynastic struggles continued to undermine all attempts to rebuild the state.
With the eclipse of first Pagan and then Angkor, the era of the great temple states was at an end. Shrivijaya, too, declined from the thirteenth century onward: Mongol depredations stifled trade with China in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth century, Shrivijaya's main trading partner in India, the Chola empire, fell to another Indian power. With the loss of its trading contacts, Shrivijaya was left high and dry.
Of the four great states of twelfth-century Southeast Asia, only East java, with an expanding trade in pepper, cloves, and nutmeg from its outlying islands, was to grow stronger in the centuries that followed. When European navigators found their way to Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century, it was the spices of the Moluccas that beckoned.
World History
