Book of Khmer Stone Inscriptions Published

A team of Cambodian re­searchers has published a four-volume compendium of ancient Khmer stone inscriptions, a project that organizers say marks a landmark in homegrown academic efforts, if not a great leap in scholarly understanding.

The volumes, presented publicly on Thursday, catalog 242 in­scriptions in Sanskrit, Pali and Khmer, dating from the sixth to 19th centuries.

They include copies of rubbings of the inscriptions, information about the inscriptions’ background, transcriptions of their text in the original script and in modern Khmer, and transliterations in Roman script. The work is also available on a CD-ROM that includes images of the inscriptions. “The work we are presenting to you today…serves without any pretension the Un­esco ideal of ‘Culture for All,’” Etienne Clement, country representative for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza­tion, said Thursday. The publication was assisted by Unesco and by Japanese government funds.

The publication resulted from four years’ work by Vong So­theara of the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Chuon Sokunthy of the Institute of National Lang­uage, Indian expert MC Ragavan and typist Mul Sovannak.

Thursday’s presentation was dedicated to the memory of Mul Sovannak, a land mine victim who suffered from chronic illness and died before the project could be completed. The newly published work will help  research­ers, and copies have been distributed to universities, the National Library, the National Museum and other relevant institutions.

But it appears the project was more an experiment to test the re­searchers’ capacity than a true addition to scholarly knowledge. The writings compiled represent only about 20 percent of all known ancient Khmer inscriptions, and none of them was newly discovered, Vong Sotheara said Thursday. Instead, he said, they were selected from the work of earlier researchers—beginning with George Coedes, who pi­oneered Khmer epigraphy in the 1930s—on the basis of the availability of documentation to the research team, which could not afford to travel to, say, Paris, where more archives are available.

In addition, the CD-ROM version of the compilation is not searchable and is organized only chronologically, so a student in­terested only in a particular geographical area would have to sift through the entire CD. This shortcoming was also due to lack of funds, Vong Sotheara said.

The magnificent civilization of the ancient Khmers, whose chief modern legacy is the Angkor tem­ples, left behind remarkably few written records. As a result, their history and way of life re­main little known.

Inscriptions on temples—many of which record courtly protocol or dedications to god-kings—are practically the only tangible record available.

The inscriptions compiled in the new volumes are thus “very important information about the chronology of events, culture and language of the civilization of ancient Cambodia,” Clement noted.

 

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