Background to Empire

The “Indianization” of the various small Khmer kingdoms or chiefdoms of main­land Southeast Asia began at least as early as the first century ce, and continued until the founding of the empire.

But the entire Indian cultural “package” was accepted very selectively by these Khmer polities. A good example of this is the Hindu caste system, with its rigid hierarchies of Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (farmers and merchants), and Sudras (menials), and with its complex, rigid rules of purity that for­bade intermarriage and inter-dining. While there were (and still are) Brahmins in the Khmer courts, and some Khmer kings could be considered Kshatriyas, the line between them was fluid—a ruler could be both a Brahmin and a Kshatriya. The re­mainder of the non-elite population was never divided into Vaishyas and Sudras, and there were never “untouchables” in Kambujadesa. Another Indian culture trait that was never adopted by the Khmer was metal coinage; their economy was always based upon barter, and taxation upon payment in kind.

How were these “Indianizing” traits disseminated from the subcontinent to the Khmer? Except for the very early Oc Eo culture of the Mekong Delta, virtually no artifacts of Indian manufacture have ever been found in a Khmer archaeological site. While Khmer sculptures and temples reflect Hindu iconography and precepts to a high degree of accuracy, they are always couched in a style that is unmistakably Southeast Asian. It is usually hypothesized, I think correctly, that these waves of in­fluence traveled from west to east with sea-borne merchants, accompanied at times by Brahmins (in spite of a religious ordinance forbidding passage across oceans, gurus (“teachers”), proselytizing Buddhist monks, and other religious specialists.

The first firm indication of this is in the Delta, where Oc Eo, a small town prob­ably founded by traders and their families, has produced evidence for a commer­cial network that extended even beyond India to the Roman Empire. From these first centuries ce on, chiefdoms became small, competing kingdoms, each with its raja and royal family, with no firm boundaries between one polity and the next. The historian O. W. Wolters^[1239] did not believe that any of them even deserved the word “kingdom”: as late as the seventh century, they formed an unknown number of principalities, each of which was under the control of a local ruling family. As he says, “political initiative was exercised by the heads of these families, who sought by conquest or alliance to impose temporary overlordship.”

Be that as it may, some of these small states attained a high degree of architec­tural and sculptural brilliance, such as the seventh-century site of Sambor Prei Kuk (believed to be Ishanapura, capital of a state headed by a ruler named Ishanavarman. At the head of the Delta was the even earlier town of Angkor Borei; from this area have come the finest free-standing sculptures known for mainland Southeast Asia, representing Shiva, Vishnu, and Rama—one of Vishnu's avatars.