Khmer literature

Khmer literature is the writing of the Khmer people, a southeast Asian ethnic group primarily concentrated in the country of Cambodia who have an ancient literary tradition marked by significant historical innovations. Around the fourteenth century CE, the Khmer language replaced Sanskrit as the primary tongue of Khmer literature and scholarship. Experts typically trace the history of formal Khmer literature to this important shift.

Beginning with Khmer’s supplanting of Sanskrit, the history of Khmer literature can be divided into two broad periods: a classical and a modern period. The classical period extended into the nineteenth century, with most of its representative works being composed or committed to permanent forms between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Khmer literature’s modern period was strongly shaped by the colonial presence of France in what is now Cambodia. This period began when Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1863.

The continuum of modern Khmer literature was interrupted during the administration of Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, which was led by Communist dictator Pol Pot (1925–1998) and ruled Cambodia from 1975–1979. The Khmer Rouge led a targeted destruction of Cambodia’s established intellectual, artistic, and cultural traditions, which made a tenuous recovery after Cambodia reopened to the broader community of nations during its post-Communist era.

Background

The Khmer language belongs to the Khmeric branch of the Mon–Khmer language family. It derives from Old Khmer, which emerged around the seventh century CE and evolved from an Austroasiatic language known as Pre-Khmer (Proto-Khmer). The oldest surviving written texts in the Khmer language consist of inscriptions dating to the seventh century. Historians have documented older forms of writing in the traditional Khmer homeland in modern-day Cambodia, which date to at least the fifth century and were composed in Sanskrit.

Sanskrit remained the dominant written language of the Khmer people until the fourteenth century, when an ongoing linguistic evolution resulted in Khmer’s ascendance to the scholarly and literary tongue of Khmer civilization. The Khmer alphabet, first used in the seventh century, evolved from a script format with origins in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. It had a noteworthy impact on the literary culture of southeastern Asia, with linguists citing it as the inspirational source of both the Thai and Lao scripts of the classical age.

The shift from Sanskrit to Khmer roughly coincided with a mass shift in spiritual affiliation among the Khmer people to the Theravada school of Buddhism, which occurred in the thirteenth century. Around the mid-fifteenth century, ongoing conflicts with rival states in what is now Thailand had the general effect of pushing the Khmer population toward the southern regions of modern-day Cambodia. This led to the founding and growth of Phnom Penh, which remains the capital city of contemporary Cambodia.

Following these events, the Buddhist Khmer state became increasingly dependent on surrounding kingdoms. In 1863, the Khmer king formally requested protection from France as the expansionist ambitions of neighboring powers increasingly threatened the Khmer state’s survival. France first administered Cambodia as a protectorate, but later relegated it to colony status. French rule of Cambodia continued until 1953, when Cambodia became independent.

The early decades of Cambodian independence were generally stable and successful, but regional geopolitical conflicts associated with the Cold War (1947–1991) wielded increasing influence over Cambodia. In 1970, Cambodia instituted a pro-American democratic government, which was overthrown by Khmer Rouge Communist forces in 1975. The Khmer Rouge instituted a brutal brand of collectivist policies, the full horrors of which were not fully revealed until after its 1979 demise. At least 1.2 million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge regime, perishing from malnutrition, mismanaged or untreated diseases, overwork, and summary executions. The Khmer Rouge were deposed by a 1979 Vietnamese invasion, which reconfigured Cambodia as a Vietnamese protectorate until democratic self-governance under a system of constitutional monarchy was established in 1993 with United Nations (UN) assistance.

Estimates from 2022 place the Cambodian population at approximately 17.27 million, of which approximately 90 to 95 percent is of Khmer ethnicity. Small ethnic Khmer populations also live in neighboring regions of Thailand and Vietnam, while an international Khmer diaspora tracing mainly to Khmer Rouge-era refugeeism and asylum-seeking has established communities in the United States and other countries.

Overview

The Khmer word for literature is aksarsastra,with the term’s root word, aksar, meaning “script” or “letter.” This distinction impacts the Khmer concept of literature, which includes not only scholarly, religious, and artistic written compositions, but also the act and study of writing itself. From this perspective, Khmer literature originates with the earliest preserved written texts in the Khmer language, which consist of inscriptions dating to the seventh century. A broader view might also include the earlier Sanskrit inscriptions of the fifth century.

The Khmer heritage of what Western observers consider literature is ancient and descends from strong oral traditions. Classical Khmer texts, which consist mainly of stylized poetry composed in formal language and epics, were memorized by a specially trained class of traveling narrators who would recite works as part of elaborate public performances. In the 1840s and 1850s, poet and ruler King Ang Duong fostered both new literature and revision and translation of old manuscripts.

Modern Khmer literature began to evolve after Cambodia became a French protectorate and colony. The first Khmer-language publishing house was established in the early twentieth century. New literature forms including novels and newspapers emerged during the 1930s. Rim Kin wrote Sophat, the first Cambodian novel, in 1938, but it was not available in his home country until 1942. It follows a favorite form, that of romance between a rich person and a poor person. The titular character finally learns he is not really an impoverished orphan but is a noble.

Prior to the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover, modern literature had been thriving in the Khmer community, and literary production resumed almost immediately after the 1979 Khmer Rouge ousting. However, the legacy of Khmer Rouge rule has continued to have a limiting impact on the production and consumption of Khmer literature, even in the twenty-first century.

Classical and Early Modern Khmer Literature

Classical and early modern Khmer literature, broadly defined as the Khmer literary tradition of Cambodia’s precolonial period, consists of four main genres: formal poetry, Buddhist-themed religious narratives, didactic proverbs, and folklore. Traditional Khmer poetry is defined by intricate rhyme schemes and its use of antiquated formal language, necessitating the development of specially trained storytellers to render them via oral performance. This art is still practised in contemporary Cambodia, albeit to a limited degree. Observers believe that complete forms of the traditional art of poetic performance have likely been lost.

Researchers have documented more than five hundred surviving Buddhist religious stories, collectively known as the Jataka tales. Drawing on the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, the Jataka tales recount the past lives of Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563 BCE–ca. 483 BCE), the Buddha. Researchers cite a long-form tale known as Moha Vessandar Jataka, a mainstay of Khmer religious festivals, as the genre’s best-known example.

Didactic proverbs, known in Khmer as chbap, are instructive, rhyming verse-form works classified into multiple subgenres according to their intended audience. The proverbs offer practical insights into social life, functioning as a kind of moral or ethical code for daily living. Examples of chbap subgenres include chbap srey (proverbs for women), chbap bros (proverbs for men), and chbap peak cas (proverbs of ancient wisdom).

Khmer folklore, called reuang preng in Khmer, dates to the fifteenth century. Belonging to the Khmer oral tradition and historically accompanied by music, Khmer folktales were not committed to writing until the twentieth century.

Literature and the Arts Under the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge have earned infamy for their ideological zealotry, which considered the educated and artistic classes a threat to their power. Educated people were heavily persecuted under their regime, with literacy, proficiency in foreign languages, and even the presence of eyeglasses sufficing as grounds for a person’s imprisonment or execution. The act of writing personal accounts was similarly considered a potential security violation and was strictly prohibited under threat of severe punishment or death.

Estimates suggest that only about 1 percent of all educated Cambodians survived the period of Khmer Rouge rule, and that approximately 90 percent of Cambodia’s books were destroyed between 1975 and 1979. Cambodia’s national library was converted into a storage warehouse during the Khmer Rouge administration, and many Buddhist monasteries were cleared of their literature repositories and repurposed as prisons.

This targeted destruction of Khmer literary traditions was accompanied by a virtually complete halt of all artistic production within Cambodia. The only works of Khmer literature produced during the Khmer Rouge era were authored by refugees and asylum-seekers who managed to escape or consisted of Communist propaganda commissioned by the authorities.

Post-Khmer Rouge Literary Revival

Since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Khmer literature has struggled to recover. Cambodia’s publishing infrastructure remains underdeveloped, and relatively low literacy rates have persisted into the twenty-first century, resulting in limited audiences for written works. However, authors began issuing new works almost immediately after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, with many simply writing on loose-leaf paper and circulating photocopied works in public.

In addition to a revival of the Khmer novel, which first appeared in the 1930s, post-Khmer Rouge literature also includes memoirs as an emergent genre. Many such memoirs relay accounts of life during the Khmer Rouge regime, which have entered the historical record as documentary evidence of the shocking horrors perpetrated under Pol Pot. Refugees in exile have continued to write and publish so-called survival novels. Romantic fiction returned to prominence. Although modern novels rely to a greater degree on dialogue, the poor orphan who finds love remains a common device.

Bibliography

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Kunthear, Mom. “Pagodas Key to Khmer Literature Vitality.” Phnom Penh Post, 16 Aug. 2022, www.phnompenhpost.com/national-post-depth/pagodas-key-khmer-literature-vitality. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

Ledgerwood, Judy. “Cambodian Literature.” Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University, www.seasite.niu.edu/crossroads/ledgerwood/cambodianliterature.htm. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

May, Sharon. “Cambodian Literature: From Angkor to Year Zero and Beyond.” Words Without Borders, 2 Nov. 2015, wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2015-11/cambodia-from-angkor-to-year-zero/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

Svantesson, Jan-Olof. “Mon–Khmer Languages.” Oxford Bibliographies, 19 Sept. 2022, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0127.xml. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.