Tradition

Sampot

សំពត់

The sampot (សំពត់) is the length of cloth that Khmer men and women wrap around the waist as a lower garment.[1][2] It is an uncut cloth, about one meter (3.3 feet) wide and up to about two and a half meters (8.2 feet) long, worn either drawn between the legs as chang kben (ចងក្បិន) or hanging as a skirt.[2][3]

Name

In the 1967 dictionary of Samdech Chuon Nath, sampot covers any woven cloth, of thread, silk, fiber, bark or wool, used to wear or to cover with. The 1997 Cambodian-English dictionary gives "cloth" and "a kind of wraparound skirt", and lists many named kinds.[1] French writers of the nineteenth century called the garment langouti.[4]

Ways of wearing

Chang kben (ចងក្បិន)

To wear the sampot chang kben, the cloth is wrapped around the waist and its ends are rolled together in front. The roll is passed between the legs and tucked in at the back, so that the cloth falls like loose trousers.[3][5] The kben (ក្បិន) is the rolled edge of the cloth that is tucked in at the back.[1] Men and women both wear it this way, and it is usually kept for ceremonies. Today it is seldom worn except at weddings and in classical dance, and a cloth for it measures about 4 meters (13 feet) long and 1 meter (3.3 feet) wide.[6][1][2]

Samloy (សម្លុយ)

In the samloy style, the cloth hangs down to the hem like a skirt, the opposite of chang kben. The sampot samloy is a long skirt for daily wear, worn by men and women.[1]

Sampot bot

Under the French protectorate, women kept the sampot as a skirt while men turned to trousers, and the skirt was made into a fitted one with a flat fold at the side, the sampot bot or sampot jupe.[2] It is common among civil servants, and in silk it is worn at weddings. The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts held the first Khmer Sampot Bot Gala from March 1 to 3, 2024.[7]

History

Funan and Chenla

Chinese histories of Funan, the early kingdom of the lower Mekong, tell that its people at first went unclothed. In the founding story, the stranger Hun Tian (Kaundinya) came by sea, married the queen Liu Ye and taught her to wear a cloth through which she put her head.[8][9] In the third century, envoys of the Chinese kingdom of Wu came to the court of King Fan Xun. The king then ordered the men of the country to wear a cloth wrapped around the body, which the Chinese called ganman. Great families cut it from brocade, and the poor used plain cloth.[8][9] The French scholar Paul Pelliot read the ganman as the Malay sarong or the Cambodian sampot, always a garment for the middle of the body.[9]

An embassy from Zhenla, as the Chinese called Chenla, reached the Sui court in 616. Its king wore rose-colored cotton wrapped around the waist and belly and hanging to the shins, and white cotton for everyday wear.[10]

Khmer statues show the sampot from the sixth century. Men of that time, as the statues of Phnom Da show them, wore a light, short sampot wrapped around the waist and held by a simple belt. One end fell in folds in front, and the other passed between the thighs and was fastened to the belt at the back in a "fishtail". Farmers still wear a krama (ក្រមា) the same way for field work and bathing.[11] The men of Isanapura, the seventh-century capital at Sambor Prei Kuk, wore the same short sampot drawn between the thighs, while women wore a long skirt cloth to the ankles.[11] A Vishnu of 650 to 700 in the Cleveland Museum of Art and a standing Ganesha of the second half of the seventh century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art both wear a short wrapped sampot.[12][13]

Angkor

A four-faced sandstone statue in a tall crown, wearing a short sampot pulled up between the legs and folded at the waist.
Brahma, Angkor period, first quarter of the 10th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Every figure in Angkorian sculpture wears a lower garment made from one rectangle of cloth, worn in one of three ways. In the first, the ends are wound together, passed between the legs and tucked into the waistband at the back: narrow for commoners and ascetics, and wide, pleated or patterned for the elite, gods and bodhisattvas. In the second, the cloth is wrapped and left to hang as a skirt, mostly on apsaras, royal women and their attendants. The third is a narrow hip cloth knotted in front, worn by some soldiers.[14] A Brahma of the early tenth century in the Bakheng style, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wears a knee-length sampot drawn up between the legs and secured at the back.[15] Old Khmer inscriptions name several lower garments, among them canlek, a lower garment, and kupen, a covering cloth.[14]

Zhou Daguan, a Chinese envoy who lived at Angkor in 1296 and 1297, wrote that everyone from the ruler down, men and women alike, wrapped a piece of cloth around the hips. Going out, they added a larger cloth over it. Cloth came in many grades, and the ruler's was worth two or three ounces of gold. Only the ruler could wear cloth with dense patterns; high officials and princes could wear sparse patterns, and only palace people could wear cloth with two groups of patterns.[5] Much cloth came from neighboring countries, and the most valued came from the "western seas", read as India.[5][14]

Nineteenth century

Around 1859 the King of Cambodia "generally wears nothing but the langouti, the native dress", his of yellow silk held by a gold belt set with precious stones.[4] The young women in his boat at Kampot wore a wrapped cloth with its corners looped up and fastened to the sash behind.[4]

Silk sampot of this period survive in museums. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a sampot chawng kbun of hol (ហូល) silk received in Singapore in 1855.[16] The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History holds a sampot hol chawng kbun that King Mongkut of Siam gave to US President Franklin Pierce around 1856.[17] A note in the 1902 French edition of Zhou Daguan described the sampot of the day as a piece of silk or cotton rolled around the hips. One corner was drawn up between the legs and tucked into the belt behind, making a kind of loose breeches.[5]

Since 1953

After independence, the line between men's and women's dress grew firmer, and women kept the sampot.[2] Under the Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, colorful dress was forbidden and a uniform of black cotton was imposed. When the National Museum of Cambodia reopened in 1979, three quarters of its silk textiles and costumes were gone, among them sampot hol and sampot chorebap.[17] In the years since, mainly middle-aged and older women have returned to silk sampot of phamuong (ផាមួង) and hol for ceremonies.[2] Today the sampot is worn above all for weddings, religious celebrations and official events.[2]

Cloths

A long red silk skirt cloth with a fine diamond pattern and a deep patterned border at the hem.
Woman's hip wrapper (sampot hol), 1880 to 1910. Honolulu Museum of Art.
A long rectangle of red silk with a finely patterned center field and plain magenta ends.
Silk sampot, early 1900s. Cleveland Museum of Art.

Most surviving chang kben cloths are hol, silk woven with weft ikat. In hol the pattern is dyed into the thread before weaving.[16][3] Chorabap is a heavy silk patterned with gold or silver thread, worn at court, at weddings and by dancers.[3][1] Striped sampot (sampot anlounh, សំពត់អន្លូញ) were worn by older people and farmers.[1]

Phamuong (ផាមួង)

Phamuong is silk cloth for the sampot, usually one color, woven in whatever color the buyer wants.[18] The plainest has an undecorated field. Others carry small scattered motifs or a decorated band at the hem.[19] A man or a woman may wear it as a ceremonial skirt, chang kben or samloy.[1]

In 2007 phamuong was woven in Prek Changkran in Prey Veng province and at Koh Dach in Kandal province. Weavers use at least three sets of pattern heddles (thkor) for plain phamuong and, at Koh Dach, up to 30 for the diamond pattern phamuong tbong pich. "Duck's neck" phamuong (kor tea) was a popular color.[18] With hol and chorabap, phamuong is still worn at weddings, traditional festivals and royal ceremonies.[18]

Rank and ceremony

Rank has long shown in the cloth. In Funan, great families wore brocade and the poor plain cloth.[8] At Angkor, patterns were graded from the ruler down, and on the reliefs the elite wear wide pleated cloths while commoners wear narrow ones.[5][14] Silk sampot are worn at weddings and court events and given to monasteries and monks as merit.[3] Many are kept for formal and merit-making occasions.[19] A sampot offered to monks for the rains retreat (sampot chamnam vossa, សំពត់ចំណាំវស្សា) is also a bathing cloth for monks.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 SEAlang Library, Khmer dictionaries: សំពត់ (Headley 1977 and 1997, Chuon Nath 1967)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Fashion & Market, Magali An Berthon, The Cambodian sampot: womanhood, modesty and emancipation (May 21, 2025)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Skirt cloth (sampot chawng kbun), circa 1900 (undated)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Project Gutenberg, Henri Mouhot, Travels in the central parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos, volume 1 (1864)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Paul Pelliot, Mémoires sur les coutumes du Cambodge (in French, 1902)
  6. ↑ Magali An Berthon, 100 fashion and textile terms in Khmer, English, and French (2025)
  7. ↑ Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia celebrates traditional heritage, as Sampot Bot Gala revives love of Khmer dress (March 3, 2024)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Wikisource, Yao Silian, Book of Liang, chapter 54 (in Chinese, undated)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Paul Pelliot, Le Fou-nan (in French, 1903)
  10. ↑ Wikisource, Book of Sui, chapter 82 (in Chinese, undated)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Agence Kampuchea Presse, Le costume khmer à travers le temps (in French, April 16, 2019)
  12. ↑ Cleveland Museum of Art, Vishnu, 650 to 700 (undated)
  13. ↑ Metropolitan Museum of Art, Standing Ganesha, second half of the 7th century (undated)
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Gillian Green, Indic impetus? Innovations in textile usage in Angkorian period Cambodia (2000)
  15. ↑ Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brahma, early 10th century (undated)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Victoria and Albert Museum, Sampot chawng kbun (about 1855)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Archaeological Textiles Review, Magali An Berthon, TEX-KR project: from textile remains to lost practices (2022)
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Buddhist Institute, Technique of natural dyeing and traditional pattern of silk production in Cambodia (December 2007)
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Yosothor, Chea Sophary, សំពត់សូត្រ (Silk sampot), Khmer Renaissance 18 (December 2023)
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This page was last edited on 8 October 2026, at 13:21.