Phnom Penh—the Last Capital of Cambodia

                                   by Jim Goodman

park in front of Phnom Penh's Royal Palace

       The story of Phnom Penh begins in 1372, when a wealthy widow named Daun (Grandmother) Penh was walking along the Tonle Sap River and noticed a tree trunk washed up on the riverbank.  Inspecting it, she discovered five Buddha images, four of bronze and one of stone, inside the trunk.  She then arranged the building of a sanctuary on top of a mound near her home to house the images.  The mound was later enlarged to a height of 27 meters to become the only hill (phnom) in the area and the village was thereafter known as Phnom Penh (Penh’s Hill).

view of the Tonle Sap River from its western bank

       Sited at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers, it was primarily a fishing village and part of the Khmer Empire of Angkor.  But this was an empire very much in decline.  At its peak at the beginning of the 13^th century under Jayavarman VII, it ruled over all of present-day Cambodia, the southern third of Vietnam, most of Laos and eastern and central Thailand.  By the time of Daun Penh’s discovery it had lost most of its western provinces to independent Thai states, Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, which expanded their territory at the expense of the Angkor Empire.

       By 1400 Ayutthaya had absorbed Sukhothai and turned its attention east.  In 1431 its army invaded Angkor and captured and sacked the capital Angkor Thom.   Though Ayutthaya forces did not remain in possession, after their retreat the city was half in ruins.  Moreover, the complex irrigation system, crucially important to a state based on agrarian income, had collapsed.  The cost and required work to repair the irrigation system and the damaged city buildings seemed to be so great that King Ponhea Yat decided to move the capital downriver to Phnom Penh, further away from the Thai enemy.

image of Daun Penh at Wat Phnom

the chedi at Wat Phnom

       Most of the buildings in Angkor Thom were temples or religious monuments, reflecting how enmeshed religion was in the organization of the state.  King Ponhea Yat set out to endow Phnom Penh with the same level of religious identity.   He raised Daun Penh’s mound to a proper hill and built a temple on top.  Unlike the great monuments of Angkor Thom, this was a modest structure, probably very similar to what has replaced it since then.  And unlike Angkor Thom temples, dedicated to Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist deities, Wat Phnom was the first Theravada Buddhist temple in the country.

Angkor-style bronze frieze on the Wat Phnom stairway

       It’s not clear how, or how long it took, but the Theravada form of Buddhism became the popular religion, replacing the rather mild form of Hinduism in the Empire’s heyday.  Kings identified themselves as incarnations of Shiva or, if a Mahayana Buddhist like Jayavarman VII, as the savior Boddhisattva.  With the collapse of the empire such beliefs no longer resonated with the general populace.  Post-Angkor kings laid no claim to divinity.

       They could still be religious patrons, though, and King Ponhea Yat established four other temples in his new capital that are still in use today, though nothing of their 15^th century foundations remain.  Still, because of their ancient prestige, they are outstanding compounds and among the city’s tourist attractions today.

Wat Phnom

       The most popular, naturally, is Wat Phnom.  Entry is via a stairway lined on each side with bronze plaques with bas-relief reproductions of Angkor scenes.  Within the temple viharn, besides the main Buddha image, are wall murals depicting scenes from the Jataka Tales.  Behind the viharn is a shrine to Daun Penh and a large white chedi containing Ponhea Yat’s ashes.  Below the hill is a garden clock, installed during colonial days.

       Khmer locals come to the viharn to have their fortune told.  They hold a palm-leaf book above their heads and without looking insert a page marker.  Then a pandit reads what it is written on the page. If they don’t like the result they can try again and again, but have to accept the third result.

river boat on the Mekong at Phnom Penh

       Phnom Penh’s new status only lasted until the early years of the 16^th century.  King An Chan moved the court up the Tonle Sap River to Lovek.  The realm was safe for a while, for Ayutthaya was involved with battling the Burmese.  Western missionaries, traders and adventurers arrived and both Lovek and Phnom Penh grew into important trading ports.   But towards the end of the century, temporarily freed of the Burmese threat, Ayutthaya invaded Cambodia and in 1594 sacked Lovek.  The Khmer court subsequently relocated to Oudong, next to hills a little to the south.

colonial era building, now a government office

       Cambodia fared better the following century, repelling another Thai invasion in the early years and enjoying peace on the western frontier for a long time.  But by mid=17^th century the royal family had split into antagonistic factions.  Brothers fought over the royal succession and since neither had enough support to vanquish the other, contenders enlisted the aid of their Thai or Vietnamese neighbors.  Winners rewarded their allies by ceding faraway provinces, thus further shrinking the country’s size.

       The civil wars continued through the 18^th century.  In 1770 Thai forces burned down Phnom Penh.  The city recovered enough that in 1812 King Chan moved the state’s capital to Phnom Penh.  In the early 19^th century the Court occasionally returned to Oudong for a while, but most of the time resided in Phnom Penh.  When Cambodia became their protectorate in 1868, the French recognized Phnom Penh as the capital and it has remained so ever since.

French villa from colonial times

sunset at Wat Botum

       At the time the city more resembled a large fishing village, consisting mostly of thatched hits along a single main track and scores of houseboats along the riverbanks.  The population was about 25,000.  The French eventually installed administrators in the capital and all the provinces, but didn’t do much to develop Phnom Penh.  Having also taken control of southern Vietnam by then, they were more concerned about urban transformation in Saigon.

knotted gun at the north end of Monivong Boulevard

       That changed with the appointment of Hyun de Vernville in 1889 to govern the protectorate.  Wanting Phnom Penh to be a worthy French administrative center, the ”Pearl of the Orient”, he sponsored a network of roads along a wide boulevard running from Wat Phnom to the southern end of the city.  A French quarter grew up north of Wat Phnom, characterized by opulent villas for French officials and businessmen, while new government buildings were designed along French architectural lines.

       After World War I the pace of development accelerated.  The city government filled in drainage canals to expand the road network, created parks and dredged the Mekong to allow for the entry of bigger ships.  River trade increased and in 1932 a railway station opened, with a line to Battambang in the west.  While certainly the French lived in a grander style, prosperity also spread to the native Khmers. 

tourists riding Sam Bo the elephant at Wat Phnom

       In World War II the Japanese took charge in name, but allowed the French officials to continue running affairs.  Afterwards, responding to the post-war anti-colonial sentiments in Southeast Asia, marked in Cambodia by a radical armed insurgency that soon controlled half of the country, the French gave ground.   They permitted elections to a National Assembly, granted partial independence in 1949 and finally, plagued by worse problems in Vietnam, granted Cambodia full independence in 1953.

       Now a new Khmer elite governed the city and the country, rooted in an educated middle class.  Motorbikes and automobiles began using the streets.  Theaters, cinemas and coffee culture thrived.  Temples were renovated and enlarged.  It was a calm and optimistic period, but would not long persist.  There were still class divisions between the educated elite and the masses of impoverished workers, farmers and fishermen.  And Cambodia would not be able to stay aloof from the wars engulfing their neighbors.

old mural at Wat Lanka

       Conflict in Vietnam sent refugees from the border areas streaming into Phnom Penh.  This influx increased significantly in the early 70s, when civil war erupted in the country.  Phnom Penh was the last holdout against the Khmer Rouge, its population many times swollen by refugees for whom it had scarcely any resources to accommodate.  The Khmer Rouge conquered the city in April 1975 and promptly ordered the entire population out, old residents and new refugees alike. 

       Until the beginning of 1979, when the Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh was like a ghost city.  Former residents and new settlers now started trickling in, taking up residence in vacated and bomb-ravaged buildings.  Khmer officials took over the old colonial administrative offices, but neither they nor the Vietnamese, preoccupied with eradicating the Khmer Rouge in the countryside, did much to reconstruct Phnom Penh.

museum piece--Angkor stone sculpture of dancing apsaras

       Vietnam never intended to stay in Cambodia longer than necessary. Satisfied their Khmer clients could continue without them, and with the Khmer Rouge all but eliminated as a major threat, the Vietnamese withdrew in 1989.  Three years later UN troops arrived as peacekeepers and soon Phnom Penh’s economy, though with erratic electricity and water supplies and an infrastructure still in a state of disrepair, boomed with new hotels, restaurants, bars and brothels catering to the well-paid UN personnel.

       The city had a lawless reputation throughout the 90s, more famous for its proliferation of guns than its tourist attractions.  Aware of this, the government in 1999 seized all the guns it could locate, crushed them and melted them down to make a unique sculpture of a handgun with a knotted barrel.  With the turn of the century and some improvements in the infrastructure, the city began promoting its tourist attractions.

National Museum of Cambodia, from inside the courtyard

       These included the temples established in the mid-15^th century by King Ponhea Yat during Phnom Penh’s first turn as national capital.   They had been rebuilt in the 20^th century and renovated after the Khmer Rouge left, but still enjoyed considerable prestige and importance.  The concrete chedi at Wat Ounalom supposedly contains a hair from the Buddha’s eyebrow.  The grounds of Wat Botum hold many elaborate chedis with the ashes of important monks and politicians.  Wat Lanka, named for its original connection with Theravada Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka, featured old wall murals depicting scenes from the Buddha’s life and offered twice weekly meditation courses.  And at Wat Phnom visitors could also have a ride around the front courtyard at the base of the hill on a genial old elephant named Sam Bo.

Reclining Vishnu in stone, National Museum

       To appreciate the past, visitors explored the galleries and courtyards of the National Museum of Cambodia.  The dark red sandstone building, designed by the French archaeologist George Groslier in traditional Khmer style and opened in 1918, is one of the most beautiful in Phnom Penh.  Consisting of four linked galleries in a rectangle around a shady courtyard flanked by gardens, the museum contains relics, artifacts and sculptures from pre-historic to modern times.

       The best, naturally, are those from the Angkor era, mostly of Hindu deities.  These include stone sculptures of Yama, the Lord of Death, Reclining Vishnu, Garuda--Vishnu’s mount, the elephant-headed Ganesh--Shiva’s son, Indra, King of the Gods, atop a three-headed elephant and a wonderful frieze of dancing apsaras.  There are also fine bronze pieces--one of Nandin the bull--Shiva’s mount, and a large Reclining Vishnu—and a life-size stone sculpture of a meditating Jayavarman VII, who ruled the empire at its peak in the late 12^th century.

Psar Thmei market building

       For a look at the dark side of Cambodia’s history one could go to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  This was formerly the Khmer Rouge’s infamous S-21 prison and interrogation center.  Here are the cells and torture chambers and instruments used, as well as photographs of thousands of victims, most of them Khmer Rouge cadres who fell afoul of the paranoid leadership for one reason or another.

       Out of the past and into contemporary times, visitors could enjoy the markets and the attractive riverfronts.  At the Russian Market south of Tuol Sleng, so named because when it opened in the 80s all its goods came from Russia, one could buy antiques and artifacts and even a fur coat if returning to a cold climate.  The new Psar Orussey offered goods from all over Cambodia, while Psar Thmei was worth a visit just for its unusual art-deco building.

riverside park near the Silver Pagoda

       The riverfront afforded quiet views of various boats passing by and the most popular area, for both foreigners and city dwellers, was just below the National Museum.  Here stands the Royal Palace and next to it the Silver Pagoda, named after its 5329 silver floor tiles, each 20 cm square and weighing one kilogram.  It houses a 50 cm high green crystal image known as the Emerald Buddha, surrounded by bigger Buddha images of silver, bronze and one of solid gold, covered with 2086 diamonds and precious stones.

       The riverside park in front of these buildings is a popular and attractive place to rest, relax and watch the sunset.  And as darkness approaches, it’s only a few blocks walk to the restaurants and bars of the entertainment district that complete the list of things to enjoy in modern Phnom Penh.

the Silver Pagoda

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Ancient Khmer Mysteries in Southern Laos

                                                          by Jim Goodman

Phu Kao Mountain and its natural lingam

       Champassak is the last major town on the Mekong River in southern Laos.  A little further downriver, just above the Cambodian border, lie the Khone Falls and the Four Thousand Islands, the outstanding scenic attractions in the vicinity and the prime destination for most travelers.  But for anyone interested in history and ancient cultures, the special feature of Champassak is its proximity to Wat Phu, a temple compound built in the heyday of the Khmer Empire and still in use today.

       Among the mountains backing the plains on the western bank of the Mekong, one in particular stands out from all the others.  Called Phu Kao locally, at 1416 meters it is not the highest in the range, but distinctive from all the rest by the cylindrical, phallic-like protuberance on its summit.  To settlers coming here nearly two millennia ago, influenced by Indian civilization, especially Hindu religious concepts, this was a terrestrial manifestation of the god Shiva’s lingam.  The mountain became known by its Sanskrit name Lingaparvata (Lingam Mountain) and a temple at its foot, today known as Wat Phu, was dedicated to Bhadreswar, another name for Shiva.      

classic Khmer style at Wat Phu

       Wat Phu lies along the lowest slope of this mountain, about 11 km from Champassak.  The first religious buildings went up on this site in the 5^th century, apparently under the direction of officials or priests from the ancient city of Shresthapura, about 4 km east on the Mekong.  From its size—3 square km—and its fortifications, it was obviously the capital of a state.  But the extent of its boundaries and the identity of its rulers remain uncertain. 

       Early speculation by Western archaeologists that it might be Chăm, probably based on the name Champassak for the province, seemed implausible by the fact that all other Chăm states at that time ran in a contiguous line along the south central coast of Vietnam, quite some distance from Champassak.   Others thought it an early capital of the pre-Angkor state of Chenla, though no inscriptions or other evidence exists about moving Chenla’s capital to Ishanapur, today’s Sambor Prei Kuk, where it remained until its eventual fall.

       Not much remains from that period, anyway; a few inscriptions and worn sculptures at Wat Phu, ramparts, temple foundations and broken stone pediments, some carved, in Shresthapur.  But from the early 10^th century the area became part of the expanding Angkor Empire.  Eventually Angkor rulers established a road from Shresthapur to Angkor and began refurbishing the Wat Phu site with all the accoutrements of a classic Khmer temple compound.

barays and twin palaces at the lower end of Wat Phu

       Nowadays most of the extant structures at Wat Phu date from the 11^th-13^th centuries, when the Angkor Empire was at its peak and the architectural and sculptural styles established in the capital spread throughout the realm.  So there is much about Wat Phu that resembles Khmer religious monuments at sites in Cambodia and Thailand.  This is immediately obvious upon entering the area and seeing the pair of rectangular artificial ponds, called baray in Khmer, that lie in the front part of the compound.

       These barays date from the late 8^th century and are essentially the prototypes for the barays subsequently constructed at Khmer sites in both Cambodia and Thailand.  Cosmologically, the barays represent the oceans surrounding sacred Mt. Meru, itself symbolized by the hillside temple.  Whether they had any further use is not clear.  Some scholars speculate they were part of an irrigation system, others that they were meant to hold back flood waters.  While incoming and outgoing channels have been found along the huge barays of Angkor, no such evidence has yet turned up at Wat Phu’ s barays.  They may have been strictly symbolic.

12th century palace at Wat Phu

       Just past the left baray, two ruined buildings of laterite and sandstone stand opposite each other, flanking a pathway lined with stone nagas jutting up on either side.  Local people call them the men’s and women’s palaces, though without any factual basis.  They date from the 12^th century reign of Suryavarman II, the king who built Angkor Wat, who commissioned and endowed these palaces.

       Only the walls remain.  The roofs are missing and the interiors are empty.  But the railed windows, real and false doors, carvings over the doors and sculptural themes are all typical of classic Khmer artistry.   The imagery is all Hindu and no Buddha images, old or new, exist on the premises of either palace.  Yet Buddhist Lao devotees visiting Wat Phu leave offerings at the entrances to these palaces of incense sticks and little pagodas made from banana leaves.

Shiva and Parvati astride the bull Nandi

       Though it has long been a Buddhist site, originally Wat Phu was dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva.  Thus Shiva is the central figure carved on the typanum, the leaf-shaped, fully carved section mounted above the doorways.  One nice example depicts Shiva and his wife Parvati astride the bull Nandi.  Most others show him above the head of the jawless monster called kalas.  Sculptures of rishis, Shiva’s devotees, adorn some of the columns.

       A few stone sculptures of seven-headed nagas and hellish demons stand on the grounds outside these palaces.  From here on, Wat Phu’s unique features begin to stand out.  Just beyond the palaces is a small temple dedicated to Shiva’s mount Nandi.  There’s not much left of it, besides the foundations and lower walls. A few stone sculptures of seven-headed nagas stand on the grounds outside.  But there’s no shrine to Shiva’s mount in any other Khmer temple compound in the region.  It was here, in 1991, that archaeologists found inscriptions linking the site to Chenla, in the form of dedicating statues, long since disappeared, to the parents of a Chenla king.

the jawless monster kalas

portrait of a rishi

       From Nandi’s temple the dirt path soon ends at a shrine to a bigger than life-sized statue of a Khmer warrior.  This is the start of the ascent to the main temple, on a staircase of long rectangular stone blocks, flanked by frangipani trees that blossom with fragrant white flowers in mid-winter.  Brick terraces lie on either side of the staircase, though no one knows what use, if any, were made of them.

remains of the Nandi temple and the path to the main shrine

      After a moderately steep stretch, the staircase terminates at the main temple.  Recently outfitted with a corrugated iron roof, the rectangular building is not too much larger than the one dedicated to Nandi down below.  But it is in better condition, even though some of the extant sculptures are partly obscured by white encrustations.  The figures include Indra atop a three-headed elephant, Shiva, rishis, warriors and goddesses, augmented by floral and geometric patterns.

       Just behind this temple, next to a cliff, lies a small spring.  In ancient times the water from this spring was channeled to run over the lingam installed in the temple.  When Wat Phu became a Buddhist center instead of Hindu, sometime in the 13^th-14^th centuries, a Buddha image replaced the lingam.  The one installed today, of indeterminate age, is definitely in a Lao style, if rather primitive looking, and not Khmer.  It remains a popular object of veneration to the local Lao people.

odd courtyard image

venerated ancient warrior image

       Yet vestiges of its origin as a Hindu shrine abound in the area.  Just outside the temple stands a stone sculpture of the Hindu trinity.  In the center stands multi-headed, multi-armed Shiva.  To his left sits four-headed Brahma and to his right sits Vishnu.  A short walk from this sculpture is a boulder with an elephant carved into its face and a stone makara, a mythical sea-creature.

Lao Buddha in the main shrine

      Also in this area is the most unusual sculpture in Wat Phu, or in any Khmer temple compound.  This is the famous, or even notorious, ‘crocodile stone’ that is apparently one of the original sculptures in the area.  Legend has it that this stone carving, roughly the size of a man lying down, was the site for ancient human sacrifices.  Supposedly the victim was tied along the outlines of the sculpture.

       The allegation originated in an interpretation of an 8^th century Chinese history of the short-lived 6^th century Sui Dynasty.  In writing about Chenla, the text describes a Lingam Mountain near the capital, with a temple on its summit, “always guarded by five thousand soldiers and consecrated to the spirit named Po-do-li, to whom human sacrifices are made.  Each year the king himself goes to the temple to make a human sacrifice during the night.  It is thus that they honor the spirits.”

       This is all the existing evidence about human sacrifice at Wat Phu.  The identification of Phu Kao with the Lingam Mountain of the text is not definite, for it is possible other similarly shaped summits, while not as striking, could have been designated by Hindu kings elsewhere as their own Lingam Mountain.  Moreover, no temple compound remnants exist at the summit of Phu Kao, much less evidence of encampments for five thousand soldiers, or even a designated pilgrim’s path to the summit.  And if the crocodile stone were a sacrificial stone, why was it outside the temple?  Finally, we must consider the possible prejudices of a Chinese historian writing about the ‘barbarian’ customs of a faraway ‘barbarian’ state.

the 'crocodile stone'

       On the other hand, there’s no plausible explanation for what the crocodile stone might have been instead.  No other Khmer temple compound holds such an image and the crocodile was not a creature common to mythological tales.  Crocodiles, as well as elephants, existed in the area at the time, so perhaps both carvings simply represented the outstanding fauna of the vicinity.  But without a satisfactory alternative explanation, the legend of the human sacrifice stone lives on, mentioned in all the guidebooks, perhaps because it’s easier to believe in old myths than to accept their refutation.

       Sometime around the late 13^th century Theravada Buddhism began replacing Hinduism as the religion of the people of Champassak.  At Wat Phu devotees of the new religion substituted a Buddha image for the Shiva lingam in the temple, but made no other changes to buildings or statues in the compound.  Angkor’s political authority over Champassak, and the lands north and northwest of it, began weakening the following century and the province wound up being the birthplace of a new kingdom.

the Hindu Trinity:  Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu

       By the early 14^th century the Lao portion of the Khmer Empire had dissolved into a string of more or less autonomous states, over which Ayutthaya was trying to establish suzerainty.  A newly born grandson of the prince of the northernmost state Muong Sua, later to be renamed Luang Phabang, supposedly had 33 teeth, a feature considered both inauspicious and threatening.  As a result, the ruler ordered him put on a raft and floated down the Mekong.  Eventually the raft reached Angkor and the Khmer Court rescued the boy and raised him.

       This is the legend around Fa Ngun, whom the Khmer king raised as his own son, appointed a royal tutor for him and eventually arranged for Fa Ngun’s marriage to one of his daughters.  In 1352 the Muong Sua prince died and was succeeded by his son, Fa Ngun’s father.  But when he died seven years later, the Muong Sua court passed over Fa Ngun and installed another relative.  Fa Ngun persuaded the Khmer king, who probably hoped to restore Khmer political influence in Laos, to give him an army to assert his claim to the Muong Sua throne.

twilight on the Mekong at Champassak

       In 1359 Fa Ngun’s army crossed into Champassak, swept aside local resistance, continued upriver and eventually conquered Vientiane and Muong Sua.  But rather than restoring the authority of his former Khmer patron, Fa Ngun proclaimed the foundation of a new kingdom called Lanexang—Land of a Million Elephants—the precursor of the modern state of Laos. 

       Champassak had another brief fling of historical importance as an independent state in the 18^th century, when Lanexang broke up into three countries.  But otherwise, the records are sparse and one of the lingering mysteries of Wat Phu is the fate of the Khmer who once lived there.  Today less than 6000 ethnic Khmer live in Laos, whose population is about 6.5 million.  What happened to the Khmer soldiers used by Fa Ngun to establish his kingdom?  And all the Khmer who came to worship Shiva at Wat Phu, where are their descendants?

       In 2001 UNESCO declared Wat Phu a World Heritage Site.  The award citation praised its “integration of a symbolic landscape of great spiritual significance to its natural surroundings.”  This is obvious upon entering the site and is still the main attraction of Wat Phu.  But it is the unsolved mysteries—the use of the barays, the motive behind the odd temple to Nandi the bull, the ’crocodile stone’, the vanished Khmers—that accentuate the mystique of the place.  They tease the mind with fancied ‘explanations’ and thereby enhance the excursion.

ancient stairway to Wat Phu's main sanctuary

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