George Coedès

George Coedès (also spelled Cœdès; 1886 to 1969) was a French scholar who edited and translated the ancient inscriptions of Cambodia. He directed the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) from 1929 until 1946 or 1947, and his eight volumes of Inscriptions du Cambodge appeared from 1937 to 1966.

Illustration inspired by the temple's red sandstone shrines.

Historical figure details
Also known as	George Cœdès; Georges Coedès
Roles	Epigrapher; Historian; Director of the École française d'Extrême-Orient
Born	August 1886, Paris, France
Died	October 2, 1969, Paris, France
Associated with	École française d'Extrême-Orient, Chuon Nath
Country	France
Subjects	History & Remembrance

Early life

Coedès was born in Paris in August 1886. His family was of Hungarian descent, and he studied at the Lycée Carnot. He was first headed for a career teaching German. He earned a teaching degree at 19 and a higher diploma in 1906, spent a year in Germany and taught German at the Lycée Condorcet from 1908. The EFEO writes that inscribed steles he saw in a museum set the course of his life. He took classes at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), where he learned Sanskrit and Khmer. At 18 he published his first article, on an inscription from Cambodia in Khmer and Sanskrit, in the EFEO's journal.

Cambodia and Siam (1911 to 1929)

In 1911 Coedès finished his military service and his diploma at the EPHE. The EFEO appointed him in October of that year, and in November he sailed for Cambodia. He joined the EFEO's staff in Hanoi and became its professor of Indochinese philology by 1914 or in 1915.

A royal ordinance of September 4, 1915, set up a commission to prepare a dictionary of the Khmer language. Coedès had suggested the commission and worked with it in its early years, during a mission to Cambodia. The monk Chuon Nath later revised the texts and led the work through to the finished dictionary.

On short stays in Bangkok, Coedès came to know Prince Damrong, who asked him to take charge of the National Library of Siam. The EFEO seconded him there from 1918. He kept the post until 1926 and was secretary-general of the Royal Institute of Siam from 1927 to 1929. He was married to a Khmer aristocrat. In Bangkok he modernized the library, organized its collection of steles and published a first collection of the inscriptions of Siam in 1924. In 1918 he also published an article on Srivijaya, an empire of the southern seas, which the EFEO calls seminal. He later spoke of his 13 years in Siam as the happiest of his life.

Director in Hanoi

In 1929 Coedès became director of the EFEO in Hanoi, and he settled there early in 1930. He built up the school's library, photographic laboratory and museum, and he wrote short articles and gave talks that made its work known to a wider public. When war broke out in 1939 he was on leave in France; he was recalled and reached Indochina on November 4, 1939. He held the post until 1946 or 1947.

In 1944 he published in Hanoi the first version of his history of early Southeast Asia as a whole. Later editions took new titles, and an English translation appeared as The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968). As director he also wrote the preface to Maurice Glaize's guide to Angkor, Les Monuments du groupe d'Angkor (1944).

Work on Cambodia

Coedès worked on inscriptions in many languages of the region, from Sanskrit and Pali to Old Khmer, Mon and Cham, and his work linked the early peoples of Southeast Asia to the civilizations of India and China. From 1911 to 1956 he published a series of 40 "Études cambodgiennes" in the EFEO's bulletin. His books on Cambodia include Bronzes khmers (1923), Le temple d'Angkor-Vat (1932), Un grand roi du Cambodge, Jayavarman VII (1935) and Pour mieux comprendre Angkor (1943). He edited and translated the inscriptions of Cambodia in the eight volumes of Inscriptions du Cambodge (1937 to 1966).

His reading of the inscriptions changed the dating of the Bayon. In 1928 he placed the founding of the Bayon under Jayavarman VII at the end of the 12th century. That made the temple about three centuries younger than a study of its style had suggested. From the inscriptions he also set the order of the Angkor monuments, from the Roluos group (879 to 893) to the Bayon and the walls of Angkor Thom in the last years of the 12th century. Inscriptions found at the foot of the Baphuon let him identify it as the "golden mountain" that Udayadityavarman II raised at the center of his capital. Coedès placed the capital of Funan at Ba Phnom. The scholars Aymonier and Pelliot had placed it at Angkor Borei. The historian Michael Vickery wrote that his view long stayed the conventional one, but that new archaeology at Angkor Borei might force a change. He supported anastylosis, the method of taking a temple down and rebuilding it with its own stones, a method Henri Marchal introduced to Cambodia and used at Banteay Srei toward the end of 1931.

In his 1993 preface to Glaize's guide, Jean Boisselier called Coedès "the unchallenged master of Khmer studies." The EFEO writes that he may also be considered the father of Thai epigraphy.

Later life

After the war Coedès went back to France; the EFEO gives 1947 as the year he retired as its director. From 1947 until his death he was curator of the Musée d'Ennery in Paris. He also taught at the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes: the Académie lists courses in Siamese and in civilization there from 1947 to 1960, while the EFEO gives 1947 to 1951 for his courses at the school. He became an officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. He joined the Academy of Overseas Sciences in 1948, and on February 14, 1958, he was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In 1964 he was elected president of the Société asiatique. Cambodia made him a grand officer of its Royal Order. He died in Paris on October 2, 1969, at the age of 83.

In 1970 the National Library of Australia bought his library from booksellers in Amsterdam. It holds about 2,000 books and pamphlets, more than 1,000 reprints and his papers, and it is especially strong on the archaeology and monuments of Cambodia and Vietnam.

References