Place
Prey Veng
ព្រៃវែង
Prey Veng (ព្រៃវែង) is a province in southeastern Cambodia, on the east bank of the Mekong, about 95 kilometers from Phnom Penh by National Road 1 and 11.[1] It is a flat farming province, and in the 2019 census it had 1,057,720 people, the third largest population of any province.[1][2] Its name means "long forest" in Khmer, though Into Cambodia notes that the last large trees were cleared for farmland over some 30 years.[1]
Geography
The province covers 4,883 square kilometers.[2] It borders Svay Rieng to the east, Kampong Cham and Tbong Khmum to the north, Kandal to the west, and the Vietnamese provinces of Dong Thap, Long An and Tay Ninh to the south.[1] The land is part of Cambodia's central plain, low and flat, with no mountains or large forests. The Mekong runs along its western side, and in the rainy season, from May to October, floods spread over the fields and wetlands that feed its rice and fish.[1]
At Neak Loeung the Mekong rises and falls by 7.5 meters between the rainy and dry seasons.[3] Travelers on National Road 1, the road from Phnom Penh to Vietnam, once crossed the river there by ferry, and at busy times such as Khmer New Year and Pchum Ben the wait could reach seven hours. The Tsubasa Bridge, 2,215 meters long and built with grant aid from Japan, opened there in April 2015, and the crossing now takes about five minutes.[3]
Boeung Sneh, a wetland in Ba Phnom district, holds a bird sanctuary that the Ministry of Environment made a protected area in December 2019.[1]
People
The 2019 census counted 1,057,720 people in Prey Veng, up from 947,372 in 2008, with 217 people per square kilometer.[2] Women outnumbered men: the province had the lowest ratio of men to women in the country, which the census suggests may reflect men leaving to work in factories and other jobs elsewhere in Cambodia or abroad.[2] Nearly all residents, 99.5 percent, were Buddhist.[2]
History
Older historians placed the capital of Funan near Ba Phnom (បាភ្នំ), a hill in the province. Lawrence Palmer Briggs wrote in 1947 that the capital, called Vyadhapura in inscriptions, was probably at the site of present-day Ba Phnom.[4] Michael Vickery noted that this view, which goes back to George Coedès, long held among scholars, but that new archaeology at Angkor Borei and the lack of comparable remains at Ba Phnom might change it. He also records an inscription of 664, from the reign of Jayavarman I, found near Ba Phnom.[5]
Into Cambodia lists the districts of Prey Veng under King Sisowath Monivong (1927 to 1941), among them Prey Veng, Kamchay Mear, Pea Raing, Sithor Kandal, Ba Phnom, Kampong Trabaek and Kanhchriech. It writes that French rule brought roads and wider rice farming, and that the province suffered heavily under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.[1]
Districts
Prey Veng City, the seat of the provincial government, is the province's one municipality. The 12 districts are Ba Phnum, Kamchay Mear, Kampong Trabaek, Kanhchriech, Me Sang, Peam Chor, Peam Ro, Pea Raing, Preah Sdach, Pur Rieng, Sithor Kandal and Svay Antor. Into Cambodia counts four sangkat, 112 communes and 1,168 villages as of 2024.[1]
Economy
Most of the land is farmed, and rice is the main crop.[1] The village of Prek Changkran in Sithor Kandal district, on a branch of the Mekong, is a well-known silk weaving village; Morimoto Kikuo found that some households there specialize in the tie-knot dyeing of the thread while others only weave.[6] A 2020 study of prahok put the province's output at 1,620 tons in 2013.[7]
Places
- Ba Phnom: a hill in Ba Phnum district, about 80 kilometers from Phnom Penh, reached by a stairway with naga railings and topped by a pagoda that local people hold sacred.[1] The anthropologist Anne Yvonne Guillou ties Ba Phnom to Me Sa, a land guardian spirit and one of the neak ta.[8]
- Vihear Chan (ប្រាសាទវិហារច័ន្ទ): a ruined pre-Angkorian temple in Rung Damrei village, Ba Phnom district, built of what Into Cambodia calls lava stone, with sandstone door frames, on the national heritage list. Into Cambodia dates it to the pre-Angkor period and notes that some documents place it in the Angkor era.[1]
- Prasat Chong Srok (ប្រាសាទចុងស្រុក), also called Prey Derm Srok: a 7th-century temple of brick and sandstone in Sithor Kandal district, ringed by five ponds and a large banyan tree.[1]
- Tuol Baray Andet: a wooded site about 3 kilometers from the center of Prey Veng City that looks like an island when the land around it floods; local people treat it as a sacred place.[1]
References
- ↑ 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 Into Cambodia, Prey Veng Province (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, General Population Census of the Kingdom of Cambodia 2019: National Report on Final Census Results (2020)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Japan Society of Civil Engineers, Neak Loeung Bridge (Tsubasa Bridge) Construction Project (undated)
- ↑ Lawrence Palmer Briggs, A Sketch of Cambodian History, The Far Eastern Quarterly 6(4) (August 1947)
- ↑ Michael Vickery, Funan Reviewed: Deconstructing the Ancients, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 90-91 (2003-2004)
- ↑ Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, Morimoto Kikuo, Traces of War: The Revival of Silk Weaving in Cambodia (2002)
- ↑ Journal of Ethnic Foods, Tradition and fermentation science of prohok, an ethnic fermented fish product of Cambodia (May 6, 2020)
- ↑ Anne Yvonne Guillou, Khmer Potent Places: Pāramī and the Localisation of Buddhism and Monarchy in Cambodia, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 18 (5), 2017 (author's copy, HAL)