Influences on Khmer civilization

Influences on Khmer civilization are the traditions that Khmer people met through trade, faith, settlement and war over some 2,000 years, and made their own.[1]

Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ) is an Austroasiatic language, and the farming communities of the Mekong valley were already ranked societies, with chiefs, craft workers and large works to control water, before the first states took shape.[2][1] From the first centuries of the Common Era a sea trade linked the lower Mekong with India and China. Local leaders took up Sanskrit names and languages, temple plans and gods from India, and used them to raise their own standing as rulers of small, competing states.[1] Later the Khmer met the Cham and the Muslim traders of the Malay world, monks from Sri Lanka, the courts of Siam and Vietnam, and Europeans. Each time they chose what to take and reshaped it. The Indian Ramayana became the Reamker, and Khmer borrowed much of its vocabulary from Sanskrit and Pali.[3][4]

How this happened is debated. George Cœdès called the early kingdoms "the Indianised States of Southeast Asia" and traced them to a steady flow of Indian settlers. Charles Higham, drawing on Michael Vickery's reading of the Old Khmer inscriptions, found no trace of an Indian community in the lands of the later Angkorian kingdom. He concluded that the local people were well able to select and adapt foreign traits to their own ends.[1]

Influence also ran outward. Words of Angkorian Khmer passed into the Thai of Ayutthaya, the Thai script appears to be based on Old Khmer script, and the idea of the god-king grown at Angkor later shaped government at Ayutthaya.[5][6][7]

The Khmer foundation

Main pages: Khmer language, Neak Ta, Laang Spean, Indigenous peoples of Cambodia

Outside traditions reached a living culture. People used the cave of Laang Spean, in Battambang province, from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic.[8] In the Iron Age, moated settlements with craft workers, trade in rare goods and works to control water point to chiefdoms with hereditary leaders.[1] The Old Khmer texts of the 7th century show what these communities kept. A local leader called pon led the cult of his ancestral temple, controlled ponds and swamps in the long dry season, and passed his title through his sister to her son. The temples were not given only to Hindu gods: ancestral and local deities, often female, were called kpon.[1] Older beliefs in ancestors and in neak ta (អ្នកតា), the guardian spirits of the land, lived on beside the religions that came from India.[9]

Came: rice farmers moving south along the river valleys, probably with the Austroasiatic languages.[1]

Made Khmer: the pon and his temple, water control, local gods called kpon.[1]

Seen today: shrines to neak ta and their yearly festivals, such as the homage paid each year to Khleang Moeung at his shrine near Pursat.[10]

India

Main pages: Funan, Devaraja, Khmer script, Hinduism in Cambodia

Chinese records tell of an Indian Brahman who married the local queen Willow Leaf and founded the first royal line.[11] A Cham inscription of 658 at Mỹ Sơn gives him the Indian name Kaundinya, and Cambodian tradition knows him as Preah Thong (ព្រះថោង).[9] From the late 5th century local rulers set up inscriptions in Sanskrit and built brick temples to Hindu gods.[1] The script came as a vehicle for Sanskrit and Pali, and its earliest inscriptions closely resemble the Pallava script of southern India.[4] In 802, by an inscription carved in 1052, a Brahman performed a rite on Phnom Kulen for Jayavarman II, and the royal cult it founded is known by the Sanskrit name devaraja.[12] The Khmer named the cult in their own language, kamraten jagat ta raja, and Vickery held that the institution belonged to old Khmer culture.[13] Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat and dedicated it to Vishnu.[14] The Ramayana reached Cambodia around the 2nd century; the Khmer Reamker took shape in the 16th and 17th centuries.[3][15]

Came: Sanskrit, Hindu gods, temple plans, kingship rites.[1][12]

Made Khmer: Old Khmer beside Sanskrit in inscriptions; a royal cult with a Khmer name; the Reamker.[1][13][15]

Seen today: Angkor Wat, the Khmer script, the Reamker.[14][4][3]

China

Main pages: Chinese Cambodians, Zhou Daguan, Kuy Teav

Most of what is known of Funan comes from Chinese dynastic histories, and small Chinese families already lived there, some with Khmer wives.[11][16] In 1296 Zhou Daguan came to Angkor with an embassy of the Yuan dynasty and stayed about 11 months; his book is the only surviving account of daily life in the Angkorian capital.[17] After the fall of the Ming dynasty, loyalist soldiers and their families left China in 1679, and some settled in what is now Takeo and Kampot and along the Mekong and Bassac rivers.[16] Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese and Hakka speakers each formed a congregation around their own language.[16] Their descendants often spoke Khmer and practiced Theravada Buddhism while keeping Chinese surnames and ancestral rites.[18] Kuy teav, the breakfast noodle soup, is credited to Cambodians of Teochew descent, or more broadly to Chinese immigrants. From them it spread across the country.[19][20]

Came: envoys, traders and settlers.[17][16]

Made Khmer: Sino-Khmer families that speak Khmer and keep ancestral rites.[18]

Seen today: kuy teav at breakfast; Lunar New Year and Qingming ancestor offerings in urban Cambodian life.[18]

Champa, the Cham and Islam

Main pages: Champa, Cham people, Islam in Cambodia, Saraman Curry

Champa (ចំប៉ា), on the coast of what is now central Vietnam, was for centuries the eastern neighbor and rival of the Khmer kingdom. Its rulers took up Hindu gods and the Sanskrit language, much as the Khmer kings did.[1] Each people knew the land and river routes into the other's country,[21] and reliefs of the Bayon show the Khmer king at war with the Cham.[1] Cham traders began to move to Cambodia after Vietnam took the Cham center of Vijaya in 1471.[22] At some point in the following centuries many Cham adopted Islam, which is the religion of all but a few small Cham communities in Cambodia.[21] In the 17th century King Ramadhipati I married a Malay princess, became a Muslim and brought Cham weavers to court to make hol, a silk tie-dyed before weaving.[22] Islamic learning in Cambodia developed through ties with centers of religious study in Pattani, Kelantan and Mecca.[23] Under the Khmer Rouge, the Cham were persecuted as an ethnic minority.[22]

Came: Islam, Malay trade ties, Cham weaving.[22][23]

Made Khmer: Muslim Cham communities within Cambodia; hol silk woven for the Khmer court.[21][22]

Seen today: mosques, hol silk and saraman curry, a dish Cham communities consider their own.[24]

Sri Lanka and Theravada Buddhism

Main pages: Buddhism in Cambodia, Jayavarman VII, Bayon, Wat Langka

Theravada Buddhism was taken up across society at Angkor from the 13th century, when wooden prayer halls replaced the long tradition of stone temples to Hindu gods and Mahayana Buddhism.[25] Jayavarman VII, who built the Bayon, was a Mahayana Buddhist. Hema Goonatilake, an adviser to the Buddhist Institute, writes that a monk thought to be his son, Tamalinda, went to Sri Lanka to study. Sri Lankan monks, she writes, taught the Dharma to Cambodian princes and advised the court. In her account, inscriptions in Pali and Khmer show the Sri Lankan form of Theravada growing in Cambodia by the early 14th century. Sri Lankan monks began the first center of Theravada study, in Phnom Penh, in 1422.[26] Monks of this tradition lived in Wats in almost every community in Cambodia for at least six centuries before 1975.[27]

Came: Theravada Buddhism and the Pali language.[26]

Made Khmer: a Wat in nearly every community; Pali words in Khmer.[4]

Seen today: Buddhism as the faith of about 97 percent of Cambodians in 2019.[28]

Siam

Main pages: Longvek, Ang Chan I, Ang Duong, Oudong

Exchange with Siam ran both ways. Words of Angkorian Khmer passed into the Thai of Ayutthaya, and Khmer later took many Thai words, with Thai influence on its grammar by the 18th century at the latest.[5] The two courts were also rivals. In 1594 the army of Ayutthaya took the Khmer capital at Longvek.[29] In 1841 Siam's King Rama III gave Ang Duong the royal style and regalia of a Khmer king, and in 1842 a Siamese army placed him on the throne at Oudong.[30][11] A treaty between France and Siam of March 23, 1907 returned Battambang and Angkor to Cambodia.[31] In 1855 King Norodom brought the Thommayut order of monks from Siam and built Wat Botum in Phnom Penh as its headquarters.[32]

Came: Thai words, the Thommayut order.[5][32]

Made Khmer: a second Cambodian order of monks, with Wat Botum as its center.[32]

Seen today: the Thommayut beside the larger Mohanikay; "Nation, Religion, King" on government letterheads, a phrase that reflects Thai usage.[5]

Vietnam

Main pages: Khmer Krom, Vietnamese Cambodians, Ang Mei

By the end of the 17th century the Vietnamese Nguyễn lords had reached Prey Nokor, the site of Saigon. In the 18th and 19th centuries they moved further into the Mekong Delta, lands the Cambodian kings claimed.[33] Modern Vietnamese accounts treat 1757 as the year Cambodia gave up the delta. Cambodia's claims there were left unsettled under French rule, and in 1949 France awarded the region to the State of Vietnam.[33] The Khmer Krom, the Khmer of the delta, kept close ties with Cambodia: from the 1920s the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh trained Khmer Krom monks and sent printed Khmer texts to the delta.[33] Ang Duong was crowned by representatives of both Siam and Vietnam, and Cambodia resumed its vassalage to both countries.[11] Large numbers of Vietnamese came to Cambodia under French rule.[34] At the end of 1978 Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and the government it brought to power, the People's Republic of Kampuchea, became the State of Cambodia in 1989.[27][16] In 1979 Theravada monks from Vietnam came to reordain former Cambodian monks.[27]

Came: settlers, and in 1979 monks to restore the order.[34][27]

Made Khmer: Khmer Buddhist life kept in the delta through ties to Phnom Penh.[33]

Seen today: the Khmer Krom communities of southern Vietnam; hủ tiếu Nam Vang, a Vietnamese noodle soup named for Phnom Penh.[35]

Europe and France

Main pages: French protectorate of Cambodia, Chuon Nath, Cambodian rock

The first Europeans came to Longvek. Two Dominican missionaries arrived there in 1584 and 1585, and the city may have had quarters for Chinese, Japanese, Arab, Portuguese and Indonesian residents.[36] In 1590 King Satha sent the Portuguese Diego Belloso to the Spanish governor of Manila to seek friendship and military help.[29] France declared Cambodia a protectorate in 1863.[33] Under French rule, Chuon Nath and Huot Tath, leaders of a movement to modernize Buddhist learning, studied in Hanoi at the École française d'Extrême-Orient.[32] In 1945 a Cultural Committee set out to replace French loanwords with new Khmer terms, most of them built from Pali.[5] After independence, Western records brought home by Cambodians who had studied in France, and later American radio from Vietnam, fed Cambodian rock, which joined rock, R&B and Latin dance rhythms with Khmer melodies.[37][38]

Came: Christian missions, French rule and scholarship, Western music.[36][32][37]

Made Khmer: new Khmer words for modern things, built from Pali; Cambodian rock.[5][38]

Seen today: the songs of Sinn Sisamouth and his generation.[38][37]

Khmer influence abroad

Main pages: Khmer script, Khmer Empire, Devaraja, Khmer language

The Thai script appears to be based on Old Khmer script, and words of Angkorian Khmer passed into the Thai of Ayutthaya.[6][5] The idea of the god-king, reflected in the Khmer inscriptions of Sambor Prei Kuk and grown at Angkor, much later influenced the four-pillared system of government at Ayutthaya. It stayed central to government in Cambodia and Thailand until the early 20th century.[7] Goonatilake writes that Polonnaruwa, the royal city of Sri Lanka, had a quarter for Cambodians, and that some of its buildings seem to have been influenced by Cambodian architecture.[26] The Khmer script also writes several minority languages of the region, among them those of the Tampuan people and the Cham people.[4]

Went: from the Khmer to their neighbors, the script, Khmer words and ideas of kingship.[6][7]

Made theirs: Khmer words taken into Thai, some of which later came back into Khmer in new forms.[5]

Seen today: Khmer letters behind the Thai alphabet; minority languages written in Khmer script.[6][4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
  2. ↑ Glottolog, Central Khmer (undated)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific, The Reamker by Takrut (November 4, 2014)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard, version 18.0, section 16.4 Khmer (2026)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Southeast Asian Studies, Sasagawa Hideo, The Establishment of the National Language in Twentieth-Century Cambodia: Debates on Orthography and Coinage (volume 4, number 1, April 2015)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 EBSCO Research Starters, Christine Caputo, Thai language (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Temple Zone of Sambor Prei Kuk, Archaeological Site of Ancient Ishanapura (undated)
  8. ↑ Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Hubert Forestier and others, The Hoabinhian from Laang Spean Cave in its stratigraphic, chronological, typo-technological and environmental context (Cambodia, Battambang province) (2015)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, History of the Khmer in the time of the kingdom of Phnom, part 3 (February 5, 2014; in Khmer)
  10. ↑ Liber Amicorum (Péninsule), Anne Yvonne Guillou, The present life of post-Angkorian royal land tutelary spirits: the case of Ghlāṃṅ Mīoeṅ in the province of Pursat (2020)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 The Far Eastern Quarterly, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, A Sketch of Cambodian History (August 1947)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Asian Civilisations Museum, Piphal Heng and Paul Lavy, Pre-Angkorian cities: Ishanapura and Mahendraparvata, in Angkor: Exploring Cambodia's Sacred City (2018)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Angkor Database, Michael Vickery, The Reign of Suryavarman I and Royal Factionalism at Angkor (undated)
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 University of Chicago, Digital South Asia Library (Huntington Archive), Angkor Wat, 1113-1150: The Role of Astronomy at Angkor Wat (undated)
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Music in Art, Martin Knust, Urged to Interdisciplinary Approaches: The Iconography of Music on the Reliefs of Angkor Wat (2010)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 Phnom Penh Post, Jean-Michel Filippi, A history of the Chinese in Cambodia (February 8, 2013)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 The Cambodia Daily, Michelle Vachon, Chinese Tales of Ancient Angkor (January 9, 2010)
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Cambodianess, Chinese Cambodians: A Bridge Between Worlds (November 29, 2025)
  19. ↑ Tuk Tuk Box, Chantha Nguon's Kuy Teav: A Pork Noodle Soup (undated)
  20. ↑ The Domestic Man, Kuy Teav: Cambodian Pork and Seafood Noodle Soup (July 15, 2014)
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Michael Vickery, Champa Revised, ARI Working Paper No. 37 (March 2005)
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 Royal College of Art, Magali An Berthon, Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference (1991-2018) (PhD thesis, October 2021)
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, Issue 31, Michael Feener, review of Philipp Bruckmayr, Cambodia's Muslims and the Malay World (September 2021)
  24. ↑ Grantourismo Travels, Saraman Curry Recipe for the Cambodian Curry Cari Saramann (November 11, 2014)
  25. ↑ Yale MacMillan Center, Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Introduction of Theravada Buddhism to Angkor, Cambodia (c. 13th to 16th centuries) (talk abstract, October 13, 2021)
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), Hema Goonatilake, Buddhism: ancient links with Cambodia (November 15, 1998)
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Cultural Survival Quarterly, Charles F. Keyes, Buddhism and Revolution in Cambodia (issue 14-3, posted March 2, 2010)
  28. ↑ National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, General Population Census of the Kingdom of Cambodia 2019, final results (undated)
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies No. 15, Nhim Sotheavin, Considerations Regarding the Fall of Longvek (2020)
  30. ↑ Australian National University, Bun Srun Theam, Cambodia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Quest for Survival, 1840-1863 (MA thesis, 1981)
  31. ↑ The Far Eastern Quarterly, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, The Treaty of March 23, 1907 between France and Siam and the Return of Battambang and Angkor to Cambodia (1946)
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 32.4 Buddhist Studies Review, Ian Harris, Buddhist Sangha Groupings in Cambodia (2001)
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 33.3 33.4 The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 2, Shawn McHale, Ethnicity, Violence, and Khmer-Vietnamese Relations: The Significance of the Lower Mekong Delta, 1757-1954 (May 2013)
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Global Voices, Deprived of citizenship, the Vietnamese of Cambodia live on the edge of society (March 23, 2019)
  35. ↑ Grantourismo Travels, Phnom Penh Noodle Soup Recipe for Kuy Teav Phnom Penh (March 10, 2021)
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Paulina Machuca, El sueño de un gran Pacífico en el tercer y nuevo mundo: la jornada de Camboya de 1596 (2016; in Spanish)
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 Inter Press Service, Andrew Nette, Culture-Cambodia: Pre-War Khmer Music Making a Comeback (August 17, 2008)
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 NPR, The Nearly Lost Story Of Cambodian Rock 'N' Roll (April 22, 2015)
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This page was last edited on 30 October 2026, at 17:00.