Heritage site
Longvek
Longvek, also written Lovek,[1] was the royal capital of Cambodia in the 16th century, in the period after Angkor.[2] Its walled site lies in Kampong Chhnang province, about seven kilometers (four miles) north of Oudong, the capital that followed it.[2]
Location
Longvek is in Kampong Tralach district, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Phnom Penh along National Road 5.[2] Takako Kitagawa gives about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Phnom Penh for the Longvek and Oudong area as a whole.[3] The city stood on slightly raised ground, with easy access to both river and land routes.[2]
Sources differ on where it lies. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties and Kitagawa place it on the west bank of the Tonle Sap River. That river runs from the Tonle Sap lake to meet the Mekong.[2][3] Archaeology magazine places the city on the Mekong, with access to the sea.[4] Paulina Machuca, following the historian David Chandler, wrote that Lovek lay south of the Tonle Sap lake.[1]
History
Founding
The royal court left Angkor in the 15th century. Kitagawa traces its moves: King Ponhea Yat took the capital to Basan, in Srei Santhor, in 1431 and later to Phnom Penh.[2] Nhim Sotheavin gives the same order, Srei Santhor and then a short stay at Phnom Penh, before Longvek.[5]
King Ang Chan (the Nara report calls the winner Chan Reachea) won the throne in 1525 after a long war with his rival Sdech Kan (also written Sdech Kon).[2][5] He then had his ministers build a new city at Longvek.[5] Sources differ on the founding year: Nhim Sotheavin, following one royal chronicle, gives about 1526, and the Nara report gives 1529.[5][2] In 1529 Ang Chan came from Pursat to Longvek and was crowned there as Paramaraja II (Borom Reachea).[5] Nhim Sotheavin writes that Cambodia prospered for more than 60 years after the founding and stood as the political equal of Ayutthaya, the Siamese kingdom.[5]
Trade and foreign visitors
Longvek was a trading city with ties far beyond Cambodia. Martin Polkinghorne and Yuni Sato write that its remains show a kingdom closely linked to growing world trade, and a busy center of commerce rather than an empty age.[6] Archaeology magazine writes that digs at the palace found porcelain from China and Japan, strong earthen defenses and a workshop for bronze.[4]
In the 1580s King Satha asked Malacca for help against Siam and against Malay pirates. Two Dominican missionaries, Lopo Cardoso and João Madeira, arrived at Lovek between 1584 and 1585, and Sylvestre d'Azevedo later took Madeira's place.[1] Chandler, as cited by Machuca, suggested that Lovek had quarters for foreign residents: Chinese, Japanese, Arab, Portuguese and Indonesian.[1] A European source cited by Nhim Sotheavin says that in 1590 Satha sent Diego Belloso, a Portuguese, to take a Khmer envoy and two elephants to the Spanish governor of Manila, to seek friendship and military help.[5]
Fall to Siam
The army of Ayutthaya took Longvek in 1594, the date most sources give.[2][5] One royal chronicle dates the fall to December 1593 or January 1594.[5] Nhim Sotheavin, following another chronicle, writes that the mandarins lost heart when Satha named his two young sons as heirs, and let the Siamese army into the capital with little resistance.[5] Satha left for Srei Santhor and then took refuge in Laos. The viceroy Sri Suriyobarm and others of the royal house were held as hostages at the Ayutthaya court.[5] When Belloso came back from Manila in 1594, Siamese soldiers held the city. He was captured and taken to Ayutthaya, then sent back to Manila.[5]
After 1594
The court moved to Srei Santhor for a time, and in 1620 King Chey Chetta united the kingdom and moved the capital to Oudong.[2] A Dutch visitor in the 17th century named the capital of Cambodia Leweeck or Eavweck, which is taken to mean Longvek. The city may have stayed in use alongside Oudong, only seven kilometers away.[2] Polkinghorne and Sato call it a capital of the 16th and 17th centuries.[6] As of 2018, Longvek was a small village.[7]
Memory and tradition
In Khmer memory the fall of Longvek is a disaster, remembered as the loss of the last great city after Angkor.[5] Two stories about it are passed down. In one, told in the chronicles, a four-faced Buddha image at Wat Tralaeng Kaeng, in the center of the city, was believed to guard the kingdom against Siam. Siamese monks led the king to have it destroyed, and misfortune and invasion followed. In the other, a thick hedge of bamboo protected the city. Siamese cannons fired coins into the bamboo, people cut it down to gather the money, and the army marched in. Nhim Sotheavin regards the bamboo story as legend.[5]
The Cambodian Royal Chronicles, the main written record of the period, were put together in the 19th century, so their account of Longvek is open to question.[2]
Remains
The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties began surveying Longvek in its 2010 fiscal year. The royal city is square, with earthen walls and moats on three sides covering about two kilometers east to west and 2.5 kilometers north to south (1.2 by 1.6 miles). The north and west sides have three rows of walls and the south side one. The east side has none and opens onto the flood plain of the Tonle Sap River. The walls are of clay, without brick or laterite, and stand about 4 to 8 meters (13 to 26 feet) high. The old moats are used as rice fields.[2]
Inside the walls, the remains of 20 Wats and Buddhist terraces and nine mounds have been recorded, and villagers speak of as many as 108 sites. All the Wats are Theravada Buddhist. Some are terrace Wats: a shrine hall (vihara) on a natural mound, with a terrace before it, marked off by boundary stones (sema). Others are larger working Wats on flat ground. Most foundations are of brick.[2]
Wat Tralaeng Kaeng has a sandstone structure from the Angkor period at the center of its grounds. Its main shrine keeps the feet of an earlier standing Buddha image that faced four directions, thought to date from the Longvek period. The feet alone measure more than one meter (three feet). Vihear Bakkor holds a seated Buddha of pink sandstone taken from an Angkor-period shrine.[2] Of about 1,500 objects gathered from the ground, 60 percent were pieces of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 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)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Chapter 2. Overview of the Site, in Report on the Investigations of Royal Capital Sites in the Post-Angkor Period (undated)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 J-STAGE, Southeast Asia: History and Culture, Takako Kitagawa, Capitals of the Post-Angkor Period Longvêk and Oudong (abstract, June 1, 1998)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Archaeology, Cambodia's Other Great Capital (January 12, 2016)
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 Yosothor, UDAYA, Journal of Khmer Studies No. 15, Nhim Sotheavin, Considerations Regarding the Fall of Longvek (2020)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Flinders University, Martin Polkinghorne and Yuni Sato, Early Modern Cambodia and Archaeology at Longvek, in The Angkorian World (abstract, 2023)
- ↑ The Cambodia Daily, from Southeast Asia Globe, The little-known history of Cambodia's dark age (July 19, 2018)