The decline of Funan, Cambodia
In the web article |Edited by Jiang Ranjiang |The last king of Jiang Ran, Rudr**Arman, left a lasting impression on the land of China by presenting a live rhinoceros to the Emperor of Beijing in 539 AD.
However, the subsequent historical record has become obscure. For many years, it was widely believed that Funan's decline or disappearance was due to the threat of the powerful northern state of Chenla.
However, this may not be the case.
Both chenla and Funan are Chinese misappropriations of a native word, but the exact meaning is still unclear. The account of Cambodia in the 7th century was written by Ma Tau Lin in the 13th century, hundreds of years before the events described.
Although a lot of details are provided in the book, there are doubts about it because the author considers Funan to be an island. However, the reason why Matoulin thinks so may be because the town of Funanse at that time may have been built on an island in the delta.
Georges Coedès had suggested that Bavavaman might have come from the Funanese royal family and married into a Khmer family. Some authors have even suggested that the word chinla may contain two meanings, corresponding to land and water.
These speculations may be related to the historical background of Cambodia's history as a number of principalities. At present, the exact location of Chenla is still disputed, and there is no conclusive evidence to support either side's claims.
Some historical records suggest that Chenla may have been located in the Champasak region of present-day southern Laos.
Although the inscriptions left by the chiefs of the neighboring Dangrek region do not mention Chenla, Michael Vickery speculates that Chenla most likely existed within the borders of the modern Cambodian state, a location that may have been located between the Great Lake in the west and Kampot, Vu Vu, or Kompong Speu in the east, in the Mekong River basin.
However, it is still uncertain whether Chenla was a unified state or whether Cambodia was divided into principalities in the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries.
Vikri has noted that Khmer inscriptions began to appear in the 7th century, and that "the earliest recorded Khmer stone inscriptions date back to Angkor Borei in 612 AD."
However, these are not what the Chinese call "real wax". Probably because of the decline of Funan, power shifted to many small kingdoms along the Mekong River. But what is certain is that the people who lived in the lower Mekong and delta regions during this period were the ancestors of the modern Khmer people, who spoke an ancient Cambodian language.
In the 8th century, the Javanese invaded Cambodia and imposed vassal status on the Khmers, leaving the final years of the pre-Wu era shrouded in darkness. A traveling Arab merchant, Suleiman, records a disgruntled Cambodian monarch, possibly King Mahipativarman, who had hoped to give him the head of the Sultan of Zabagh, Saliendra, on a plate.
Saliendra, having learned of this, decided to punish his untamed vassals, sent troops to drive the Khmer people away, cut off the head of the Khmer king and gave it to him on a plate.
Although in the last years of the 8th century, the restless Khmer king Yevarman II decided to move the capital from the lower Mekong to the Siem Reap region, this instead led to an even greater victory.
Vikri believes that Jayavarman II most likely came from eastern Cambodia, close to the Cham lands, and that when he came of age, he would be one of the many Khmer kings.
However, he has achieved extraordinary things. He ruled for 48 years, unified and pacified the various small states of the Khmer lands, and managed to throw off the yoke of the Javanese.
Although Jayavarman II has an important place in Cambodian history, little is known about his rule. The extant stone carvings do not reveal much information, and the Chinese chronicles remain silent.
However, in 802 AD, according to the inscriptions, Jayavarman II founded the Angkorean Empire and founded the Devarajas, or god-king bloodline, which lasted for more than 600 years and established a powerful civilization whose influence rivaled that of any other ancient nation.
His reign marked the culmination of a relative balance in Khmer politics and society.
Through the hard work of archaeologists, philosophers, and other scholars through the ages, we have developed a deep understanding of the societies in which Angkor and Cambodia's other architectural marvels live.
The site itself is the most intuitive embodiment of Khmer material culture, and the bas-reliefs of Bayon Temple and Angkor Wat provide us with detailed pictorial information about Khmer society. These materials show the daily lives of the people and the governance behavior of the rulers, including how they fought, fished, farmed, sapped goods, played games, and built great monuments.
However, the Khmers, unlike many ancient civilizations, did not leave any books behind.
When time traveler H.G. Wells ventures into the distant future, he is amazed to discover the ruins of a dying civilization in an ancient library. Although the ancient Khmer people once owned libraries, books have disappeared.
The chronicles of China chronicle the world's oldest civilization, and the minds of the Romans, Greeks, and Indians speak to us through their books. The Irish Book of Kell, on the other hand, with its glorious existence, dates almost exactly to the time when Gayavarman II founded Angkor.
In the late 13th century, Cambodians wrote Cambodian Customs, the only record of eyesightings of Angkor. At that time, the Funanese people on the other side of Asia had already begun to build their towns, libraries and canals.
Ireland's mild climate and dry desert air had a greater impact on paper and papyrus than the hot, humid and ravenous insects of the tropics had a greater impact on the ancient Khmer Khmer's palm-leaf books.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are even older, dating back to the first century AD.
In the travelogue of the Chinese traveler Zhou Daguan, we learn that he stayed in the capital for a year shortly after the death of King Gayavarman VIII, the last great builder of Angkor Wat.
Surprisingly, however, Europeans at the time seemed to know very little about the country. The great Venetian traveler Marco Polo had visited neighboring Champa in 1288, and the 14th-century Italian monk Odoric of Pordenone had also traveled to Indochina, but Cambodia was not mentioned in their travelogues.
When Iberian travelers arrived in Cambodia 200 years after Odoric's visit to Champa, the splendor of Angkor was history. The city faces threats from powerful neighbors Siam and Vietnam.
Although the Khmers left written records, these were not written on paper but carved in stone. In the Angkor region, there are about 1,200 stone carvings, written in Sanskrit, Khmer, or Pali in the 13th century.
Pali, as the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, is widely used in these inscriptions. Most of the Sanskrit inscriptions are prayers to the gods or Buddhas, or records of the genealogies of kings, ruling families, and Brahmin priests, as well as praise of their recognized good deeds, military and civic virtues.
The Internet has revealed that Sanskrit inscriptions are an important account of the religious life of Angkor, while Khmer inscriptions reveal more details about people's daily lives, customs and occupations.
These inscriptions show us a thriving Earth city-state, empire, and complex hierarchical system. They prove that Angkor was a highly culturally developed society, at least among the elite.
The authors of these inscriptions have a lively style, adept at using puns and figures of speech, and appreciate both tragedy and comedy. However, when Angkor Thom was abandoned, these fragile writing materials gradually decayed, and many of Angkor's literary treasures disappeared.
Through the information of these networks**, we can get a glimpse into a mysterious society that was once considered unbelievable. However, its outlines are blurred, the sound is suppressed, and we can only look at this civilization through glass, with a dark vision.
There are some ambiguities in our knowledge, and perhaps our interpretation of Khmer society may be challenged. With the advent of advanced archaeological tools such as aerial photography, satellite photography, radar imaging, and radiometric dating, these new discoveries will spark new debates and challenges in the future.
There is a lot of archaeological controversy surrounding Angkor, particularly regarding the "water city" hypothesis proposed by Bernard-Philippe Grossling, but as the French archaeologist Christophe Poitier has emphasized, we should put aside theoretical dogmatism for a moment until more evidence emerges.
Why move the capital? The founder of Angkor, King Jayavarman II, is a mysterious figure. While we are not entirely satisfied with why he moved his capital from the Mekong River to the arid region at the northwestern tip of the Great Lake, we do know that he established the imperial court in 802 AD and ruled for nearly 50 years at Rollos, southeast of the main Angkor complex, until his death.
When Jayavarman II arrived in Angkor, the place was not deserted.
According to online archaeological evidence, the land between the Great Lake and the sandstone hills to the north was inhabited by humans at least 1200 BC. At the site of Phnom Bakheng, we found remains of the Iron Age.
These indications suggest that there may have been some small agricultural settlements in this area ruled by the petty king. However, the arrival of Jayavarman II completely changed the fate of the region.
Based on Angkor, he unified the Khmer vassal states and established a unified form of government. This polity eventually became the center of one of the most powerful, wealthy, and populous civilizations in ancient history.
The Angkor Empire once encompassed the South China Sea, the Kra Isthmus, and the Andaman Sea, and as far north as present-day Laos. According to historians Ian Marbet and David Chandler, many of the subjects of this empire lived quite far from the capital.
Although they were given permission to travel, the elephants' journey was still difficult. The journey from Battambang to Angkor is 50 miles long and takes 5 days, a situation that still existed in the 19th century.
The country was not a single-ethnic state, but a multi-ethnic empire of which the Khmers were one of them. At the heart of the Kingdom of Angkor was the scattered metropolis of Angkor, and the latest archaeological evidence suggests that Angkor was larger than Rome or any ancient Chinese city, and that Angkor was a Khmer city.