The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty 9971697785, 9789971697785

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Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Publications Series

the Khmer Lands of Vietnam Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series Since 1979 the Southeast Asia Publications Series (SEAPS) has brought some of the best of Australian scholarship on Southeast Asia to an international readership. It seeks to publish leading-edge research by both young and established scholars on the countries and peoples of Southeast Asia across all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences with particular encouragement to interdisciplinary and comparative research. SEAPS is now published for the Asian Studies Association of Australia by NUS Press, a unit of the National University of Singapore, in alliance with the University of Hawai‘i Press in North America and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Europe.

Editorial Board Professor Edward Aspinall (Australian National University) (Editor) Professor Andrew Walker (Australian National University) (Editor) Professor Barbara Andaya (University of Hawai‘i and University of Hawai‘i Press) Professor Colin Brown (Universitas Parahyangan) Associate Professor John Butcher (Griffith University) Professor (Emeritus) David Chandler (Monash University) Associate Professor Helen Creese (University of Queensland) Professor Robert Cribb (Australian National University) Professor Howard Dick (University of Melbourne/Newcastle) Dr Jane Drakard (Monash University) Associate Professor Greg Fealy (Australian National University) Professor Robert Elson (University of Queensland) Professor Barbara Hatley (University of Tasmania) Professor Virginia Hooker (Australian National University) Professor Paul Hutchcroft (Australian National University) Professor Rey Ileto (National University of Singapore) Gerald Jackson (NIAS  –  Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) Dr Paul Kratoska (NUS Press, National University of Singapore) Professor Tim Lindsey (University of Melbourne) Professor (Emeritus) Campbell Macknight (Australian National University) Professor Anthony Milner (Australian National University) Professor Anthony Reid (Australian National University) Professor Merle Ricklefs (National University of Singapore) Professor Kathryn Robinson (Australian National University) Associate Professor Mina Roces (University of New South Wales) Professor Krishna Sen (Curtin University of Technology) Associate Professor Maila Stivens (University of Melbourne) Associate Professor Philip Taylor (Australian National University) Professor Adrian Vickers (University of Sydney) Website: http://iceaps.anu.edu.au/asaa_publications/southeast_asia.html

the Khmer Lands of Vietnam Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty

Philip Taylor

    Asian Studies Association of Australia

in association with NUS Press and NiaS Press

© 2014 Philip Taylor First published by: NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress ISBN: 978-9971-69-778-5 (Paper) Published in Europe by: NIAS Press NIAS  –  Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK–1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark Tel: (+45) 3532 9501 • Fax: (+45) 3532 9549 E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.niaspress.dk ISBN: 978-87-7694-139-0 The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) is a research and service institute located at the University of Copenhagen and collaborating closely with the wider Nordic Asian Studies community. NIAS works to encourage and support Asian Studies in the Nordic countries as well as actively participating in the international scholarly community in its own right. In so doing, NIAS has published books since 1969 and in 2002 launched NIAS Press as an independent, not-for-profit publisher aiming at a premium reputation among authors and readers for relevant and focused, quality publishing in the field of Asian Studies. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. Cataloguing-in-Publication Data for the book is available from the National Library, Singapore and the British Library. All plates in the book are provided by the author. Cover image : Pchum Ben Ancestor Festival, Wat Knong Srok, Tra Vinh (Photo: Philip Taylor) Printed by: Mainland Press Pte Ltd

Contents List of Maps and Figures

vi

List of Plates

vii

Preface

ix

Introduction

1

1. Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago

31

2. Coastal River-Dune Complex: A Narrative Confederation

68

3. Freshwater Rivers: Displacement and Refuge along the Rivers of the Central Delta

102

4. Saltwater Rivers: Sovereign Nature and Tidal History in a Khmer River Basin

128

5. Flooded Mountains: Encircled by Water, Divided by Nations

162

6. Oceanside Mountains: Nature and Subsidence Between Swamp and Sea

191

7. The Northeast Uplands: Primitive Modernity in the Forest Metropole

219

Conclusion

252

Notes

272

Bibliography

291

Index

299 

List of Maps 1

Major landforms and Khmer-settled subregions of southern Vietnam

xviii

3.1 The central Mekong Delta

103

5.1 Distribution of Khmer wats on the alluvial apron, An Giang

178

List of Figures 1.1 Pond for extracting trapped rain water from the phno

45

3.1 Riverbank land use, the central delta

113

5.1 Pre-war land-use patterns in the flooded mountains

172

6.1 Land use along the beach ridge, Gulf of Thailand

198

vi

List of Plates 1.1 Ba Giam village, Tra Cu District��� 34 1.2 Fenced extended family compound, Tra Vinh

35

1.3 Rushes laid out for drying along a phno

44

1.4 Family pond in Phno Daek District

47

1.5 Sras outside Wat Veluvone

49

1.6 The cheu teal tree planted by Governor Son Kui

58

1.7 Terminus of a dune road on the Bassac River, T’khau District

63

2.1 Coastal fishing vessel, Long Phu

73

2.2 Riverside wholesale market, My Xuyen

81

2.3 Spectators watch the boat races in Soc Trang town

89

2.4 Shrimp ponds by the coast in Vinh Chau

93

2.5 A state secondary school in a Khmer neighbourhood of Soc Trang town

95

3.1 Resident monks repairing alms-seeking boat, Wat Mangkol Borei 110 3.2 Khmer houses along the riverbank in O Mon

111

3.3 Boat landing, Wat Neryvone, on the river in Dinh Mon

114

4.1 Riverside residences, Giong Rieng

138

4.2 River craft, Go Quao

142

4.3 Wat Kompong Krobei, Go Quao

144

5.1 Cattle grazing on the rice terraces during the dry season

170

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List of Plates

5.2 Floodplain activities November 2009

172

5.3 Stone-lined sras in a temple in Tinh Bien

175

5.4 Horse-drawn cart, Tri Ton

180

5.5 Khmer man harvesting a thnaot tree owned by a Vietnamese landlord

187

6.1 Oceanside residences, Kien Luong

195

6.2 Neighbourhood pond fed by underground spring, Phum Bai Ot

199

6.3 Seasonal fish pond–flooded rice field, Bai Cha Va

204

6.4 Fishing boats off Chau Kieu, Kien Luong

205

6.5 Wat Campalok surrounded by salt water

217

7.1 Stilt house, Phum Chloi

228

7.2 Stilt house, Phum Serey Odum

230

7.3 Carved guardian spirits enshrined on the outskirts of Phum Serey Odum

232

7.4 The grounds of Buu Quang temple, Thu Duc

240

7.5 Dormitory rooms for monks and students, Wat Chantarangsay, District 3

249

Preface A large and geographically extensive Khmer population inhabits the southernmost reaches of the territory under Vietnamese administration. I became aware of its importance during a journey undertaken in 1999 around the coastline of the Mekong delta. The journey was not easy for it ran very much against the grain of existing transport linkages. To circumnavigate the delta required multiple ferry crossings, short boat trips, overnight stopovers in small hamlets and spine-jarring journeys along potholed roads and deeply corrugated dirt tracks. Maritime livelihoods dominated in an environment where saltwater intrusion inhibited the growing of fruit trees and rice, and the freshwater fishing and aquaculture activities that are so prominent in the central delta. The tang of salt in the air mingled with the sweet aroma of cow manure on the roadway. Storks circled overhead while enormous flocks of ducks crowded the waterways. Culturally the landscape was very different from that I had come to know in the big riverport towns, highways and canals of the delta. Here the ethnic Chinese presence was very pronounced. Vietnamese state government buildings, schools and temples were sparse and small, and Vietnamese literacy was at a very basic level. Most notable was the very high concentration of Khmer people living in this region. I came across village after village inhabited by Khmer people, passing architecturally splendid Theravada Buddhist temples every few kilometres. Barefoot monks proceeded along the road’s verge on the alms round. Multicoloured Buddhist flags, the spritely tinkling of a Khmer gamelan orchestra and the hypnotic rhythms of Pali chanting drew me into festivals and ceremonies. Families lounged in the shaded forecourts of their multi-household compounds to escape the noontime sun. Fishermen gathered in the evening in village squares to mend nets, drink and play boules. Surrounded by Khmer speakers, many of whom were unable to communicate with me in Vietnamese, it became clear to me that ix



Preface

the Khmer cultural presence in Vietnam is robust. Continuing my journey in subsequent years, I travelled through the mountains and deep floodplain that constitute the Vietnam–Cambodia border and among the undulating uplands of the Vietnamese southeast, where Khmers are also strikingly present. Navigating small river tributaries and urban laneways in areas often considered to be predominantly Vietnamese, I came across numerous Khmer neighbourhood clusters that made me realise just how much of Vietnam’s Khmer world is out of sight and out of mind. Tropes of crisis enfold the Khmers of this region, who are considered poor, under-developed and lacking access to modern services and economic opportunities. Smugness mingles with desperation in Vietnamese official and middle class urban depictions of the Khmer as primitive and backward, and as possessing a low cultural level and a culture that is unsuited to modern realities. Among Khmers themselves the discourse of crisis is even more pronounced. Khmers would point to a host of indicators that they are marginalised, poor and unable to succeed in Vietnamese schooling. They are overrepresented in badly paid and low skilled jobs in the agrarian sector and under-represented in political life. Even more acute is their concern about the weak condition of Khmer culture and literacy relative to Cambodia, and their fears that their culture is disappearing. Many Khmers I met situated these trends within a centuries-long decline of Khmer political and cultural influence in the lower Mekong. Speaking with a ferocity and confidence that is exceptional in the Mekong delta, many Khmers considered the current government to be opposed to the emergence of an enlightened, confident and prosperous Khmer-speaking population under its watch. Yet the government of Cambodia was deemed an equally poor champion of their interests. However, the vibrancy of Khmer communities throughout this region contradicts some of these assessments and has led me to reflect on the factors that sustain Khmer identifications among its population. My initial assumption was that the apparent remoteness, marginality and lack of economic development opportunities in areas where Khmer people reside were highly advantageous to the maintenance of a Khmer cultural outlook in a region where the expansion of markets, roads, schools and administrative offices tend to favour the consolidation of Vietnamese-centric cultural capacities



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and identifications. And yet when examined in depth, the regions where Khmer people live are in many respects well endowed with natural resources and socio-economic linkages that present opportunities for a path of development that is autonomous from that preferred by the Vietnamese state. Khmers are able to draw upon a corpus of local knowledge and a set of strategies and institutions that enable them to thrive in environments that until recently have been considered marginal in Vietnamese eyes. As my Khmer language improved over the years, I also realised that although Khmers in Vietnam contemporaneously were becoming increasingly fluent in Vietnamese, they continue to inhabit a cultural world that is strikingly different to that of their Vietnameseidentifying neighbours. They possess an incredibly rich store of stories about the origins and properties of natural phenomena, the meaning of place names, and a host of Khmer legendary figures and events. These stories testify to a rich imaginative life and an everreplenishing poetic and spiritual connection to the land and waters of their region. Participating in the Khmer linguistic world orients one within a culturally distinctive sense of space and history. The region of southern Vietnam is widely referred to as Kampuchea Krom. It is commonly believed to have emerged from the sea thousands of years ago. Contradicting conventional Vietnamese notions of geography and history, Khmers in many parts of this region speak of their villages as having been part of Cambodia until 1949, or until even more recently. Khmer toponyms exist for thousands of villages and neighbourhoods, as well as for a multitude of mountains, rivers, canals, confluences, historical sites and landscape features. A distinctive Buddhist-inspired cosmology situates humans, animals, mythological creatures, ancestors, spirits and cultural others in dynamic yet highly structured relations with each other and in a vividly felt manner that make secular taxonomies appear lifeless and prosaic. Also becoming evident as I repeatedly criss-crossed the region was the considerable diversity in the experience of being Khmer in Vietnam. Within this region one can travel from places where the sea lies at the centre of Khmer livelihoods, festivals, rites and mythology to areas whose material and cultural life is shaped in a multitude of ways around mountains or, alternatively, rivers. Considerable variety exists in the cultural emphasis of localities from

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those that are culturally open and multi-lingual to those renowned for their religious and cultural conservatism. In some regions Khmers have been heavily devastated by war or extractive industries, in others they are active in commerce, while in others they are known for their fierce independence and resistance to state assimilatory pressure. Some Khmer localities are places of net immigration where Khmers have made a home for themselves in new conditions. While commonalities can be found in the experience of all who today identify as Khmers, also evident is the awareness among Khmer Krom themselves of the nuanced cultural differences from one region to the next. This book represents the first systematic survey of the human ecology of the Khmer-populated areas of contemporary southern Vietnam. Seven distinct Khmer-populated subregions are identified, each of which has a degree of coherence both in respect of the ecological possibilities it throws up and the ways that its Khmer residents have responded to them. The study uses as its criteria for identifying these subregions, the major landforms and the soil and water conditions that underpin life in a given locality. It looks for regularities in land use, livelihoods, settlement structure and communal life and explores locally distinctive cultural elaborations. Tracing vernacular communication networks, the survey seeks to identify connections within subregions and boundaries between them. Documenting Khmer people’s engagements with non-Khmer groups, and their participation in region-wide social, technological and environmental transformations it casts light on changing conditions and practices in numerous localities since the mid-twentieth century. The survey draws liberally on local myths, about natural phenomena, society and history, which offer unique insights into the cosmological schema through which Khmers orient themselves in their region. The account combines insights from secondary research on the natural environment, livelihoods and social conditions with findings from my ethnographic field visits to the places where Khmerspeaking populations live. To identify the spatial distribution of settlements and natural features, I utilised French, US and Vietnamese maps and spent weeks poring over high resolution satellite photographs made accessible through Google Earth. To ensure my knowledge of the number of Khmer villages and temples was comprehensive I utilised an official survey of the Khmer Buddhist wats of southern Vietnam (Ethnic Affairs Office 1999) and consulted



Preface

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senior Khmer monks in each Vietnamese province where Khmer people live. Between 1999 and 2013, I visited and observed conditions in over 400 villages in Vietnam whose residents maintain an identity as Khmers. I spent time in the majority of Khmer villages in each identified sub-region, paying numerous repeat visits to many of them, and developing close relations with local residents. I also paid visits to many villages in Cambodia that lie just across the border and that possess commonalities and linkages with the subregions documented in this study. I was able to spend up to six months in some sub-regions, which enabled me to experience firsthand the conditions in each. Getting to all of the villages in this survey required that I cover several thousands of kilometres, mostly on a rented motorcycle, however, my most productive journeys were spent wandering by foot with a local Khmer companion through residential neighbourhoods, fields, orchards, shrimp ponds and pepper groves, or travelling by rowboat and motorised canoe along watercourses. Whenever I saw a pond or well I compulsively peered into its depths and enquired about its history and water quality and usage. I was also obsessive in asking about the dates of temples, the meanings of toponyms and soliciting stories about the environmental history of a locality. Khmer people regularly invited me into their houses and I was treated to countless meals, invitations to join drinking sessions and offers to spend the night in their homes. The majority of my time was spent in Khmer temples, which as social and religious hubs of Khmer villages were always full of people. I met a wide spectrum of villagers, resident monks and visitors in these temples, which provided a quiet, cool and congenial environment in which to swap stories, and for me to enquire in depth about history, local life or cosmology. Almost always there were knowledgeable people on hand to fill in gaps in an account. In the temples I took part in seasonal festivals, life-cycle ceremonies, sutra chanting rites, and numerous collective meals, and sat in on healing rites, Pali classes and monastic examinations. This account relies heavily on the conversations I had with elderly Khmer Krom people, whose descriptions of their localities and recollections of conditions as far back as the mid-twentieth century provide a wealth of insights into changes and continuities in the human ecology of their region. Owing to the predominantly oral

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and ethnographic sources upon which this study relies, the timeframe for examining these developments is the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. I was able to speak with a number of Khmer senior communist party members, now retired, who were able to give me some sense of the political history of their localities. My cultural advisors included women working as Khmer teachers, farmers, petty traders, museum guides, spirit mediums and government cadres. Monks and elderly achars, knowledgeable men who had previously ordained, were my primary sources for the reconstructions of Khmer Buddhist environmental cosmology discussed in the main chapters of this book. Fortunately I developed good rapport with a number of senior abbots, meditation masters, ritual specialists and monastic teachers, who were generous in sharing their insights on such matters. The majority of the myths featured in this account were collected personally by me. My principal method was to share versions of myths I had already heard in order to elicit new myths or different versions. Sophan, a Khmer university student from Kien Giang and Tri Ton served as my research assistant for a period of time, helping me gather several myths from areas where he had lived, worked and studied. This book would not have been possible without assistance in hundreds of localities from thousands of knowledgeable Khmer interlocutors, who are far too numerous to mention individually by name. I wish to thank the Khmer Krom people in Vietnam and Cambodia collectively for the warmth, grace, care and courage with which so many welcomed me and responded to my enquiries. Several of the topics with which this account is centrally concerned, including Khmer place names, the names of Khmer Krom historical figures and Khmer Krom history and geography, are felt to be highly sensitive. In several instances my interlocutors were too fearful to discuss such topics with me, having been punished in the past for their involvement in movements that sought to raise awareness among locals of the Khmer history of their region. In such cases both my interlocutors and I immediately moved onto less traumatising subjects. A great number of people overcame their anxiety about the personal political repercussions of speaking with a foreigner about such sensitive topics and insisted that I proceed with a full account of everything they had shared with me. I hope that this book faithfully honours their wish that I convey their knowledge to people



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from other countries, and to future generations of people in their land. As an intermediary, it is difficult to avoid unintentionally distorting the meaning of information conveyed in a language that is not one’s own. However, by my act of synthesising and making available the stories in this account, it is hoped that Khmer Krom people who read it may be prompted to tell stories of their own. During the course of this research I was the subject of a continuous parallel investigation by members of Vietnam’s intrusive security service. In multiple instances, not long after arriving at a temple or a Khmer neighbourhood, I would be approached by local police and “people responsible for security” who engaged me in banal banter that veered inevitably into questions about my real reasons for visiting the locale, my existing contacts in the local area, whether people had given me anything, what interesting stories people had told me, etc. My Khmer interlocutors almost without exception were also approached by the police after I had departed and asked again about the real reasons for my visit. These visitations were particularly intense in Soc Trang and Tra Vinh provinces. Their tempo increased over time until once, during a trip to a rural district in 2011, I scored five police visits in a single day. The individuals were polite but persistent, for it was their duty to shadow me. Their presence was inconvenient, for they made my hosts apprehensive and stifled conversations, until at least the police had satisfied themselves and departed. The visits gave a good indication about the tension and mistrust that prevails at the local level with respect to Khmer people’s contacts with the outside world. However, I made the most of these visits to cheerfully and brazenly report to the police on the many problems I could see in the local area that I thought foreigners would be concerned about. Nevertheless, I must say that I was never threatened or warned off my research and, considering the circumstances (my lack of an institutional “minder” and, of course, the sensitivities of the research) was given remarkably free rein and indeed encouragement from provincial-level police in my work. So, somewhat ruefully, I feel obliged to thank Vietnam’s national and local security authorities for their tolerance of my unconventionally free-ranging research approach. The account is based on 17 ethnographic fieldtrips undertaken to Khmer-populated regions of southern Vietnam and several more to Cambodia. The earliest trips were funded by the anthropology

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departments of the University of Western Australia and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University (ANU). Fieldtrips from 2005 to 2010 were supported by an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship, entitled: “Ethnic, Social and Religious Bases of Community in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam”, and thereafter by the School of Culture, History and Language at the ANU. Writing projects such as this would not be possible without help from many people. I thank my brother, Stephen, and my sisters Mandy and Sally, and their partners, for their love and care. Grant Evans first suggested in the late 1990s that I write this study. For moral support, practical advice and encouragement that made a difference I would like to sincerely thank Erin Collins, Choi Byung Wook, Li Tana, Do Thien, Lorraine Paterson, Shawn McHale, Chris Goscha, Harold Brookfield, David Marr, Ben Kerkvliet, David Biggs, Keith Taylor, John Gillespie, Nola Cooke, Barbara Andaya, Prasert Rangkla, Gillian Dalgetty and Fred Abury. For ideas, encouragement, and a friendly ear when it was needed I thank Assa Doron, Margaret Jolly, Kirin Narayan, Ken George, Ashley Carruthers, Savanhdary, Minnie Doron, Andrew McWilliam, Mark Moko, Kathryn Robinson, Andrew Kipnis, Alan Rumsey, Ian Keen, Sango Mahanty, Ed Aspinall, Mike Cookson, Amporn Jirattikorn, Jennifer Gaynor, Varaporn Chamsanit, Bo Seo, Roger Casas and Visisya Pinthongvijayakul. I was fortunate to be able to discuss some of the findings with perceptive scholars from Vietnam such as Dang Nguyen Anh, Nguyen Van Huy, Yen Le, Minh Hang Tran, Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh, Nguyen Van Kien, Ha Viet Quan, Chau Thida, Thai Huynh Phuong Lan, Nguyen Van Suu and Truong Huyen Chi. I also benefited from discussing the project with Danh Hong, Dany Long, Chanroeun Pa, Chandarith Neak, Son Soubert and Farib Sos from Cambodia. For their advice and support, I thank Thach Thach, Giap Tran, Sothy Kien and her family, Chan Sophat, and other Khmer Krom people living overseas. I am grateful to Do Thien and Pham Thu Thuy for their translations of Vietnamese literature. I also thank my Khmer teachers, Tha Sina, a teaching genius, who got me started, and Pheaktra, both of KSL, and especially to Soksophea Suong for a year of rich and unforgettable lessons in Khmer language, mythology and beliefs. I am grateful to James Scott, Penny Edwards and Peter Zinoman for their prompt and helpful advice on



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publication. David Chandler read versions of my manuscript closely and offered precious and astute advice. For their assistance in preparing this book for publication I would like to thank the anonymous peer readers, Andrew Walker, the mainland Southeast Asia Editor of the ASAA SEAPS series, Helen Parsons, for copyediting, and Qua Lena and Paul Kratoska of NUS Press.

Map 1   Major landforms and Khmer-settled subregions of southern Vietnam



Introduction



Introduction Since the beginning, since there has been land, Khmers have lived in this place. Thousands of years ago, Kampuchea Krom did not exist. There was no land anywhere. It was all ocean. If there had been people alive at the time, all they would have seen was water. Then, earth began to appear, here and there, in the ocean. The earth was fragrant and it glowed. It was noticed by teovada, ethereal beings that inhabit the celestial realms. Attracted by the fragrance, they descended. Finding that the earth was sweet, they ate some of it. Unable to fly back to their world, they stayed on the earth where they became the first humans. Over time the gender of these beings became differentiated. So did languages, customs and countries. People struggled for a living, grew hungry and fought each other. Governments rose and fell. The Khmer empire once governed most of Southeast Asia. Now Cambodia is no bigger than a thumbnail. Vietnam was once a province in China. Now it has swallowed other countries. Buddha appeared to show people the way out of suffering. His disciples arrived in this region to propagate his teachings. Some heeded the Buddha’s message, suffering and decline were arrested. The most virtuous achieved rebirth in the celestial realm as teovada. However, the apocalypse approaches, when the earthly realm and all within it will be consumed by fire, floods and winds.

This vision of cosmic origins and endings was relayed to me by a Khmer Buddhist monk living on a stranded sea dune in the delta of the Mekong River. It was revealed to him during a meditation retreat, an activity that commonly takes place in January. At that time, the annual floods have abated, the land is beginning to dry out, and the weather is at its coolest. On one level, the vision imparted to this monk during meditation explains the origins and 



The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

prospective end of the earth and of humanity. On another level, his vision offers insights into the importance of environmental cycles for people who largely make farming their living. After January, the earth becomes progressively hotter and drier. By the Khmer New Year in April, it seems that the crust of the delta might burst into flames. Then the rains and floods come, and the earth again disappears under water for six months or more. The monk’s tale also serves to introduce the place with which this study is concerned. Kampuchea Krom is the Khmer name for the region that in English is known as southern Vietnam. In Vietnamese it is known as Nam Bo. Formerly it was French Cochinchina. The term Kampuchea Krom is a way of looking at this region from a local Khmer perspective as a Khmer place. It can be translated as Lower Cambodia. In Cambodian nationalist mythology, Kampuchea Krom is the once-integral part of the Khmer kingdom that was colonised by France as Cochinchina in the mid-nineteenth century, then wrongfully ceded to Vietnam in June 1949. Many Khmers in Cambodia are familiar with maps that demarcate the “water and land” (tuk dei ) of Kampuchea Krom into 21 Khmer-named provinces. The region remains home to a substantial population of ethnic Khmers, or Khmer Krom, believed, optimistically, by many Khmers to number at least seven million, and in some estimates over ten million. Their language, artistic forms, festivals, near-exclusive adherence to Theravada Buddhism, and cultural ancestry in the classical kingdoms of Funan and Angkor, are said to be identical to that of Khmers in Cambodia. Sorrowful Cambodian ruminations on Kampuchea Krom dwell on the tragic separation of these Khmer compatriots from the Cambodian national community, the ancient and ongoing depredations they have endured, and the pressure exerted by the Vietnamese state to extirpate their Khmer cultural roots and conform to Vietnamese mores. However, Khmer Krom people also have a reputation in Cambodia for stalwart resistance and for dedication to their temples and monks, through which they have managed to reproduce their culturally and morally distinct tradition. Cambodian children learn stories about Khmer Krom heroes such as governor Son Kui, who resisted Vietnamese assimilation of the Khmers in the nineteenth century.



Introduction



In Vietnamese thinking, this region, Nam Bo, incontestably belongs to the “land and water” (dat nuoc) of Vietnam. Its Khmer residents, reported in census data to number just over one million, are construed as one of the nation’s 53 national minorities.1  Their historical identity as former subjects of the Khmer kingdom is strenuously elided and they are written into official history as collaborators with all Vietnamese in victorious struggles against feudal and foreign domination and as participants in harmonious exchanges among the nation’s ethnic groups. This approach to the Khmer population is also fraught with ambivalence. While paying deference to Khmer culture as an item of national heritage, Vietnamese authorities question the viability of Khmer cultural practices in the real world. Khmers are portrayed in development discourse as a parochial and disengaged ethnic minority whose innate characteristics keep them backward, unaware and poor. The government sees its task as to modernise and connect the Khmers to the world, and more securely integrate them into the Vietnamese nation. On the face of it the Khmer Krom appear to be caught in a struggle between two nations who compete to call them their own. However, neither nation readily accepts them for who they are. Many Cambodians view with ambivalence those Khmers who reside outside the modern boundaries of Cambodia in a land now under Vietnamese control. Their unfamiliar accents are ridiculed; the fact that they speak Vietnamese but often cannot write Khmer is unsettling. Their identity as Khmers is doubted. Often they are thought of as culturally Vietnamese, as people with “Vietnamese souls in Khmer bodies”. In turn, Vietnamese often regard the ethnic Khmers in Vietnam with aversion, fear or disparagement; some find them mysterious and alien; many believe that the Khmers in Vietnam come from Cambodia. Khmer Krom people sum up their own betwixt-and-between status thus: “In Vietnam they say we are from Cambodia; but if we go to Cambodia they say we are Vietnamese.” The ambivalence with which this Khmer population is treated extends to the place where they live. Through Vietnamese eyes, the Khmer-settled areas of Nam Bo are portrayed consistently as remote and ecologically marginal. This portrait is at odds with the position of these settlements in attractive and resource rich lands at the heart of a bustling maritime region. This perception of marginality remains strong despite the fact that over many decades these Khmer localities



The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

have been environmentally re-engineered, built up and linked infrastructurally in the attempt to co-join them to the Vietnamese geobody. Cambodian nationalists may yearn for Kampuchea Krom’s return to Cambodia, however, none to my knowledge would be happy to see the border between Cambodia and Vietnam actually abolished. Glimpses of sugar palm trees and Theravada temples across the border may reassure Cambodians that Khmer-populated areas of Vietnam retain their authentically Khmer character, but few would find familiar the riverine, mountainous, swampy or seaside landscapes where most Khmer Krom reside. The nationalist perspective is also ambivalent towards local history. Vietnamese are proud of their nation’s ancient past but despite ample evidence that humans have lived in present southern Vietnam for thousands of years, official histories are content to claim for it a history of scarcely 300 years, dating from when Vietnamese migrants first set foot in the region. No appetite appears to exist among Vietnamese historians for acknowledging the nation’s debt to the classical civilisations of the lower Mekong whose ancient territory Vietnam now occupies and from which the Khmer Krom claim direct descent. For their part, Khmer ethnonationalists appear to ignore the fact that Kampuchea Krom has a modern history and that Khmers may have participated in changes to local society, ecology and economy in the colonial and postcolonial periods. For them, the only palatable history for the Khmer Krom is of conservatism and resistance to Vietnamese assimilation. Considering the ambivalence, one can see the attractions to the Khmer Krom of a mystical revelation that gives them an unambiguous status as autochthones. The cosmogonic vision had by the monk during meditation casts light on a self-perception that is held by many local Khmers as ancient inhabitants of this place. They come from here and from nowhere else. Strikingly, the myth speaks of their appetite for the land where they live. They embody it and cannot escape it. At the same time the myth proposes that their identity is dynamic as they transform from ethereal spirits to incorporated beings and differentiate as humans. They are part of history as wars are waged and countries expand and contract. Life unfolds within the constraints set by natural cycles as earth arises out of water, and in turn is consumed by fire, wind and water. Taking its cue from the vision revealed during meditation, this study explores an alternative approach to Kampuchea Krom as a



Introduction



mythic appropriation, a process by which the people who dwell in this ecologically unique region incorporate and become part of it. The area encompassed in this act of the imagination occupies the extreme downstream reaches of the lower Mekong basin. It is a region whose natural conditions and environmental history differ markedly from those in Cambodia or the rest of Vietnam. Far from the traditional centres of the Khmer and Vietnamese polities, its coasts, forests, mountains and innumerable waterways have proven an obstacle to the pacification and development goals of a succession of states. Intersected by numerous translocal ethnic and religious networks, and transformed by global economic, technological and ideological processes, this is a dynamic and pluralist region whose character cannot easily be comprehended by culturally unipolar explanations. The region also is environmentally complex, a factor lending impetus to diverse lifeways among its long-term residents and divergent sub-currents in regional history, and providing inspiration for the stories that Khmer people tell about the natural world in which they live. This study aims to understand how Khmers live in this environmental context and construe their place within it. Rather than see these Khmer people through nationalist frameworks as ecologically marginal, it charts their distribution within a complex environment that poses particular constraints and opportunities for human habitation. It uncovers the specificity of Khmer livelihoods in the lower Mekong, exploring the natural, societal and historical processes that affect their wellbeing and identity. By documenting the lives of Khmers in Vietnam, it seeks to correct the Cambodia-centric bias of much research on the Khmer ecological repertoire. Exploring the diversity within the region of vernacular communication systems, social hierarchies and communal forms, it also questions assumptions about Khmer insularity, stasis and marginality in writings that treat the region as a Vietnamese-led work-in-progress. It tests the contention that Khmers have been overwhelmed by, excluded from, or resistant to history, by situating Khmers within the environmental history of their region, both as protagonists and narrators of that history. The approach adopted in this study threads together my own observations of local Khmer environmental interactions with the way Khmers themselves view their relationship to the environment. It thus takes us into the realms of Buddhist cosmology and Khmer



The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

mythology and a wealth of local legends about animals, heroes and miraculous forces that do not obtain universal or canonical recognition. Relying heavily in its historical reconstructions on the oral narratives of elderly actors who experienced the events they narrated personally, the environmental histories it presents are rich in ellipses and mythic enhancements. These local accounts offer insights into how Khmer people situate themselves in place and experience history. Through them we can gain a sense of what Kampuchea Krom means to the Khmer people who dwell in this ambiguous realm between the nations of Vietnam and Cambodia. This introductory chapter sets the scene for the chapters that follow by reviewing the scholarship on three background themes. The first is the environmental setting of the region. The second concerns the ecological repertoire of its Khmer people. The third relates to their history and what is known about their relations with others. The purpose of this critical review is to search for locally contextualised questions about the Khmer Krom and to generate a set of comparable criteria for the succeeding chapters.

The Environmental Setting A key aim of this study is to explore the environmental features that loom large in the lives of the Khmers who live in Vietnam. It describes a landscape that differs significantly from the seasonally flooded plateau of old alluvium in Cambodia, which has come to be considered the archetypal Khmer milieu. Many Cambodians might consider as alien a place where canals outnumber rivers, where lakes are salty and the sea is unmistakably close. Here, people make their abode on a variety of unusual landforms that either do not exist in Cambodia or else are considered the typical abode of non-Khmer ethnic minority others. In most Khmer Krom localities culturally iconic landscape features such as sugar palm trees, oxen-drawn carts and stilt houses simply are not to be found. Some Cambodians might find disturbing the near universal practice of building houses at ground level in a region subject to widespread inundation. Others might wonder how life is possible at all in a land whose rivers are full of salt water and the groundwater is too acidic to drink. Perceptions of this region as scarcely liveable were articulated by French geographers, who, in a view shared by French and Vietnamese



Introduction



states, emphasised this region’s inherent environmental problems. Much of Cochinchina was considered inundated or plagued by poor soil, bad water or endemic disease, making it practically uninhabitable (Gourou 1940; Robequain 1944). For officials and developers eager to open the land for export production the terrain was virtually uninhabited. Such visions of the region as chronically underpopulated, underutilised and wild proposed that the ecological potential of the region remained latent until released by the application of imported technology in the hands of visionary outsiders and dynamic newcomers possessing superior civilisational resources. In contrast with perspectives that discount or fail to see the ways that Khmer people dwell in this environment, this study explores local Khmer experiences. It is interested in the environmental challenges that people of this region have long faced. Is it possible to observe and identify a specifically Khmer way of being in such an environment? What does this region look like when viewed through local Khmer eyes?

Excess Water, Scarce Land The name Kampuchea Krom, which means Lower Cambodia, and its alternative Khmer name Kampuchea Lik Tuk (Flooded Cambodia), provide a Khmer perspective on the main environmental constraint faced by residents of the lower Mekong Delta.2  This low-lying plain traditionally has suffered from a superabundance of water. Its landscape is dominated by extreme water events: prolonged high flooding, high rainfall, lengthy seawater incursions and strong tidal action. Merely a quarter of a century ago, vast areas were covered permanently by swamps. For several months each year, more than half of the region goes under water. Distinct from Cambodia, where the majority of the population is concentrated atop the high ancient floodplain of the great river, most of the younger, lower delta is scarcely above sea level. Existing literature suggests that Khmers had few if any resources with which to address the endemic problem of excess water. Scholars note that Chinese, Cham and Vietnamese inhabitants of this region once adapted elegantly to its waterlogged conditions by living semipermanently on boats.3  According to one Vietnamese historian, Vietnamese migrants were the first to settle the high natural river levees



The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

of the central delta, from which Khmers were almost entirely absent (Son Nam 1992: 49). French geographers deemed that significant human settlement and exploitation of this region became possible only after its swamps were drained in the colonial era. The banks of drainage canals comprised of earth flung up by mechanical dredges provided an all-season residential platform that was settled predominantly by Vietnamese immigrants (Gourou 1940; Robequain 1944). Khmers are associated with residence on areas of natural high ground, distributed in a curious pattern around the margins of the delta’s floodplain. Observers note almost universally the presence of Khmers along the ancient coastal dunes (known in Khmer as phno and Vietnamese as giong), sandy formations that were stranded inland as the delta front advanced eastwards. The reasons for residence in such locations are not well understood. One author suggested that Khmer preference for these heavily wooded sandy knolls owed to “the atavism that links them to the ancient habitants of the forests of the Khmer empire” (Barrault 1927: 144). Concentrations of Khmers around the bases of mountains and in the highlands near the border with Cambodia also have been noted (Brocheux 1995). To many Vietnamese, the presence of ethnic Khmers in these highlying regions is logical. In Vietnamese folk thought, such ethnic minority others, often considered wild and uncultivated, stereotypically are thought to reside in forested upland areas. Several writers have noted a topographic distinction between the residential sites of Khmers and Vietnamese, which is deemed to reflect cultural preferences. Writing about Vietnamese or “Annamite” migrants to Cochinchina, Malleret observed that “the abode of choice for these new arrivals was the low land, along natural waterways”, where their settlements are “wedded sinuously” to the watercourses, their houses built at ground level. By contrast, Khmers prefer to build their houses on stilts, in villages situated atop sandy hillocks, “where the soil is drier, the fever benign and the water more sanitary” (Malleret 1946: 25). To the French geographer Jean Delvert, it was “as if the Khmers feared water”, for he observed in Cambodia that they always took care to build their houses well above the water line (1961: 184).4  Such a remark is challenged by the findings of his own research in Cambodia, which suggest that Khmers have long been adept at colonising flood-prone regions.5  Nevertheless, many Khmers in Cambodia agree with it, considering residence upon the



Introduction



water or along the riverbanks (moat tonle) to be a stereotypically Vietnamese practice.6  One of the hypotheses explored in this study is that the distribution of the Khmer population in this flood-prone region is associated significantly with the occurrence of naturally occurring landforms that offer a refuge above the waterline. Of these landforms, the ancient coastal dunes have received most attention in the literature, but they are not the unique location occupied by Khmers; nor are they exclusively settled by Khmers. Also included are riverbanks, which many contend never have been favoured by Khmers, or else supposedly were abandoned by them long ago. Countering the exclusive focus of the literature on French and Vietnamese as the key agents and beneficiaries of land-reclaiming projects, also to be considered are Khmer practices of augmenting the height of the land and settling land that has been built up in conjunction with others. The study explores the practical and cultural significance given to landscape features where Khmer Krom people live, such as mountains, riverbanks, swamplands and dunes. How do these landforms feature in local conceptions of what it means to be Khmer and in Khmer ideas of what it means to be human? I investigate whether the tendency to differentiate ethnicity in this region along topographic lines is widely shared by local Khmer people themselves. For Khmers, does residence at different elevations have practical or cosmological implications, or imply the existence of historical or moral distinctions between people living in different parts of this landscape? What makes local people so sensitive to minute height differentials in a part of the world that is remarkably low and flat?

Freshwater Oases in a Saline Desert Despite its abundance of fresh water that comes in the form of high annual rainfall and floods, the lower Mekong region endures a long dry season, when water for drinking, domestic use and agriculture becomes scarce. In addition, almost half of the region is affected by saline incursions. Until the late 1980s, water in many of the rivers was too salty to drink for several months each year and many of the rivers and swamps are permanently brackish. The soil of much of the region is acidic and salty, rendering the groundwater undrinkable, unfit for cooking and indeed toxic (Anderson 1978; White 2002).

10

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

According to an early nineteenth-century Sino-Vietnamese observer, in Gia Dinh (present-day southern Vietnam), vapours produced by the humid female principle and unhealthy miasmas arose continuously into the air from the damp soil, entering the fibres of the human body and causing maladies such as leprosy (Trinh Hoai Duc 1820: 113–5). For colonial-era geographers, the endemic conditions of malarial infection and life-threatening water scarcity reported for western Cochinchina accounted for why this “new land” was so underpopulated and underexploited.7  Such views resonate with Vietnamese cultural constructions of the Khmer-populated hilly fringes as a region of “sacred forests, poisonous water” (rung thieng nuoc doc), and are reprised in anxieties about saltwater contamination and sea level rise that now threaten the entire delta. Various solutions have been adopted to overcome this freshwater shortage. In the early nineteenth century, boats plied the rivers of the coastal region, selling fresh drinking water.8  Elderly Khmers recalled that in the dry season, these freighters sold water from house to house, travelling along rivers whose water was too salty to drink.9  A massive system of irrigation canals dredged during the colonial and postcolonial periods channelled fresh water from the Mekong and Bassac rivers into areas whose water formerly was too salty and acidic to permit intensive residence and agriculture. These measures more recently have been complemented by a system of dykes and sluice gates that prevented seawater from entering the delta (Biggs et al. 2009). More recently still, tens of thousands of bores have been drilled deep into the earth to tap the aquifer. However, these methods for obtaining fresh water may have been of limited relevance to Khmers. French and Vietnamese state irrigation programmes are relatively recent and were oriented around the needs of immigration programmes. Alternative measures such as buying water, drilling the aquifer, or storing rainwater in above-ground reservoirs require capital outlays beyond the means of poorer rural inhabitants. In Cambodia, where a ring of mountains creates a rain shadow, a long arid season and acute water shortages also have posed a serious problem. Scholars have discussed the hydraulic works of the Angkorian era, that complex interlinked system of barays, moats, tanks and canals that made such an intense flowering of civilisation possible (Groslier 1979). Equally celebrated as a Khmer watergathering measure has been the local pond or well that served the needs of a small cluster of households. This modest yet ubiquitous



Introduction

11

collective water-gathering practice caught the attention of observers as early as the thirteenth century (Zhou Daguan 2007); it was flourishing in Cambodia in the mid-twentieth century (Delvert 1961) and it is still practised widely in rural areas today. Supplementing water drawn from rivers or groundwater drawn from wells is the practice of digging ponds or sras, often on temple grounds, to harvest and store rainwater for communal use in the dry season. It is unclear whether such rainfall harvesting methods would have been feasible in much of the Mekong Delta where the soil and groundwater are both acidic and salty. This survey examines the strategies utilised by Khmers to procure water during the dry and saline seasons. We know that various landforms and types of soil exist in the region, which are capable of capturing rainwater and protecting it from contamination by groundwater of poorer quality. These are the precise locations favoured by Khmers as a refuge from the high water, which suggests that Khmer residents understand subtle variations in soil and water quality and the distribution and properties of a variety of local dry-season water sources. The survey also investigates whether classic Khmer rainwater harvesting methods were capable of modification to make them feasible in local conditions of heavy acidity and salinity. As such it aims to contribute to an understanding of indigenous knowledge and water-gathering practices and their historic significance to local populations. It also aims to examine Khmer perceptions of the abundance, quality and properties of water, including the importance attributed to water in the constitution of Khmer communities and cultural identity.

Regional Diversity In a region that is environmentally complex (Nguyen Huu Chiem 1995), one would expect to discover significant variation in Khmer ecological adaptations. Over one third of the area known to Khmers as Kampuchea Krom is coastal, and proximity to the sea presents unique constraints and opportunities. Elsewhere, rivers and river-based livelihoods predominate. Highland areas close to the border with Cambodia present a very different set of conditions with which their Khmer residents must contend. Some Vietnamese researchers have recognised this difference and have divided the Khmer culture area in Vietnam into coastal, riverine and mountainous zones,

12

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

highlighting demographic differences between the Khmer populations of these three areas (Dinh Van Lien 1991). This nuanced approach puts Khmers in ecological context and is an advance over views which simplistically consider all Khmers to be the same, whether owing to their presumably shared innate characteristics, or else because they inhabit a geographical niche that some consider stereotypically Khmer. However, the ecological setting in which Khmer Krom people live is even more complex than suggested by this tripartite division. The coastal fringe, home to so many of Vietnam’s Khmers, itself is segmented into geomorphically distinct sub-regions dominated respectively by rivers, dune arrays and mountains. The rivers of this region also can be divided into predominantly fresh water and those in which salt water prevails. The highlands that line the Vietnam– Cambodia border include limestone coastal mountains, granite outcrops, high deposits of old alluvium, and eroded foothills. Prevailing soil conditions vary greatly throughout the region, potentially having a profound bearing on the shape of livelihoods, economy, culture and history. The diverse landforms that sustain human life intermesh with a complex waterscape divided into flood-prone, rainfed, saltwater and freshwater zones. Region-wide variations in rainfall patterns, water flows, species migrations and crop cycles result in markedly localised seasonal rhythms. In such a varied setting, the search for a typically Khmer mode of ecological adaptation is bound to be elusive. Indeed, one might expect Khmer adaptations to the lower delta to have a multiform character, with modes of residence, land use, livelihood and communication differing from one locality to the next. Technologies that work well within some localities may not be suited to others. The array of natural resources endemic to a particular locality might allow certain specialisations and economic modes to evolve that cannot be replicated elsewhere. The diversity of the settings in which Khmer people live is likely to be reflected in a diversity of cultural expressions and histories of articulating with other groups. Identifying patterns in this diversity, this study proposes that the Khmer-settled parts of Vietnam can be divided into a number of ecologically distinct sub-regions. In developing this schema I have been guided by Khmer myths and other forms of local selfconsciousness about the commonalities and connections that join Khmer localities and the characteristics that distinguish them from



Introduction

13

others. Sub-regional coherencies exist where localities share broadly similar geophysical, seasonal and resource conditions that impose common constraints on all who live there. Sub-regions may be delimited by natural features such as the sea, broad estuaries, swamps and high floodplains that may serve as obstacles to residence or boundaries between areas of concentrated settlement. They may be integrated by a shared communications network or hub that facilitate social interactions within a sub-region whose mode or intensity differs from that entertained with people beyond it. Within such formations, commonalities can be observed in livelihood activities and material culture, and in cultural expressions such as dialects, rites, or stories known only to those who reside within that sub-region. The core chapters of this book follow this schema, each addressing an ecologically distinct sub-region. The seven identified subregions capture a mid-order aspect of Khmer Krom relatedness, each more extensive in scale than the village, yet far smaller and more intimate than the nation. These localities are identified through stories told about shared origins, character, conditions, or plight, manifesting a local awareness of sub-regional differences and in some cases a shared sense of sub-regional identity. Through such a lens we also can gain a concrete if diverse understanding of Khmer Krom historical experience. Exploring this history through a sub-regional lens enables us to better identify historical continuities and disjunctures and to grasp the locally sensitive nature of Khmer historical consciousness. The discussion of local differences may unsettle nationalistic convictions that Khmers in the region referred to as Kampuchea Krom are joined in a unified predicament. It does not, however, preclude the existence of region-wide social networks or practices, and nor does it underestimate the importance of nationalist imaginaries in shaping local Khmer people’s activities and interactions. At the same time this exploration of culturally meaningful sub-regional diversity disrupts Vietnamese stereotypes about the environmentally uniform character of the region referred to as Nam Bo. One also should not presume that the changes affecting Khmer people in the postcolonial period have been uniform throughout the region. Localised trends and complex eddies in the Khmer history of this region may be related to this pattern of ecological complexity. Local Khmers might interpret their own history and conceptualise what it

14

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

means to be Khmer through the prism of geographically intimate experiences and narratives.

The Khmer Ecological Repertoire The Cambodia studies literature records that since the Angkorian period, most ethnic Khmers have made a living as rice farmers, working in a comparatively unmodified natural landscape. In a semiarid environment, agrarian activities have relied on monsoon rains and flood cycles rather than on intensive irrigation (Delvert 1961; Pillot 2007). Khmer myths and agrarian rites reveal a pronounced sensitivity to local seasonal rhythms (Poree-Maspero 1962). Until recent decades, industrialisation in Cambodia has been slight (Slocomb 2010). Specialist involvement in fishing, horticulture, industrial forestry and transport historically were associated with a range of non-Khmer groups.10  The ecological repertoire of Vietnam’s Khmer minority similarly has been characterised as simple, non-intensive and non-intrusive. Unlike the so-called “Annamites”, described by one French writer as “active and entrepreneurial”, the Cambodian minority of Cochinchina was “apathetic and traditionalist” (Malleret 1946: 31). With an attachment to the soil that French geographer Pierre Gourou described as “nonchalant”, Cambodians cultivated the land with “less determination and method” than the Annamites, used less of the cultivable land and less fertiliser. Consequently, they produced less and population densities in Khmer-settled areas never matched those in Vietnamese areas (Gourou 1940: 182–8). The ditch digging and mulching practices employed by Viets in the riverside orchards of the central delta were sophisticated gardening techniques supposedly unknown to the Khmers (Son Nam 1992: 51). As we have seen, the French considered the areas of Cochinchina where Khmer people resided “underutilised” and unproductive and set about realising their value. Forests were cleared, swamps drained and the area put under rice cultivation alone increased fourfold (Robequain 1944). Commodities such as rubber, rice and salt were produced on an industrial scale for export. In most depictions of these mis-en-valeur programmes, Vietnamese feature as the key protagonists and beneficiaries.11  Khmers are said to have often voluntarily surrendered territory to their neighbours, out of “passivity” 12  or, as contended by one Vietnamese historian, distaste, because



Introduction

15

“Cambodians do not like destroying the forest and hate those who disturb the soil” (Son Nam 1992: 49). In museums and studies dedicated to Khmer culture in Vietnam, the Khmers are associated with the growing of locally adaptive longstemmed floating rice; with a range of distinctive agrarian tools elegantly suited to the local soil, water and crop conditions; and with a variety of traditional crafts.13  While respectfully profiling such techniques as quintessentially Khmer, such portraits also reinforce a popular view of the Khmers as exponents of primitive agrarian livelihoods and techniques that remain largely unchanged. Such views thrive alongside high modernist disappointment in a way of life that allegedly remains stubbornly agrarian, non-diversified, technically backward and deeply dominated by nature. Their economic life remained small-scale, unproductive and autarchic and not oriented to the demands of a modern market economy (Phan An 1982, 1991, 2002). These views of the technically and economically backward nature of Khmer agrarian life were to inform socialist and postsocialist policies that sought to rationalise the social relations of farming, increase productivity, link Khmer rural areas to markets, and open Khmer minds: in short, they aimed to drag Khmers into modernity as conceived in the Vietnamese official imagination. This study interrogates these and other stereotypes about the Khmer ecological repertoire. Khmer oral histories emphasise their involvement in non-labour-intensive, non-mechanised and chemical free agrarian practices that made use of their subtle knowledge of ecological niches and rhythms. However, other stories reveal that they have been at the cutting edge of elegant mechanical innovations. Widespread practices of land modification for horticulture, rice farming, and residential, temple and pond construction conflict with portrayals of the Khmers as reluctant to cause offence to the soil. Khmers continue to this day to engage in hunting, gathering, and agrarian and resource pooling methods that often are denigrated by Vietnamese officials and urban dwellers as technically crude, unproductive or primitive. However, reliance by Khmers on such strategies and resources does not necessarily imply that their way of life remains unchanged, or unconnected to the orientation to agriculture introduced in those areas under the French, and reactivated in the post-war era. Instead, like marginalised yet globalised peoples elsewhere in Southeast Asia (Dove 2010), these approaches might have provided a means for Khmers to selectively engage the industrialised,

16

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

commoditised agrarian economy to their advantage, or indeed participate in it for their own reasons.

Insularity and Connection Scholars have depicted the Khmers as a geographically and socially insular people, who traditionally lived in villages of the rural hinterland. They lived away from major water routes, towns and markets, and from each other, often as a matter of cultural preference (Chandler 1972; Mabbett and Chandler 1995). Khmer village life reportedly is insular, with villagers experiencing a low level of contact and interaction with the outside world (Ebihara 1968). Until very recently the coasts are said to have been more closely integrated into Malay, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese dominated networks than to the political centre in the country’s interior (Chandler 1972; Mogenet 2003). In the lower delta, Khmers are said to have remained aloof from this region’s communicative ferment, living in the remote rural interior, the mountains and coastal fringe, and retreating from the ever-expanding Vietnamese frontier. Contemporary Vietnamese writers lament the closed and autarchic nature of Khmer hamlets, whose alleged insularity is said to impede their development and modernisation (Phan 2004). In the post-war years, domestic state and international agencies have portrayed the Khmers as remote and unconnected, lacking access to roads, markets, education and awareness (Taylor 2007a). Many Khmers embrace these notions of their own spatial marginality and the virtues of actively maintaining physical separation from others in the interior (kang knong ). The thesis of Khmer insularity is tenacious, however, it flies in the face of logic and evidence. The Mekong Delta is a communicatively open environment. Surrounded on two sides by the sea, and interpenetrated by many thousands of kilometres of natural and artificial waterways, it is home to more than a dozen major freshwater and saltwater ports. These communications pathways are associated with the activities of a variety of non-Khmer groups. The waterways, riverports, coasts and sea lanes long have been the site of Chinese junk routes, entrepots and trading communities (Cooke and Li 2004). The rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta were the vector of Vietnamese immigration, and have constituted the preferred



Introduction

17

location for Vietnamese fishing activities and residence. The waterways have been home to an assortment of smugglers, river pirates, Cham Muslim traders, and a variety of local syncretic religions (Engelbert 2007). At their confluences are large urban concentrations, markets and administrative centres in which a variety of ethnicities predominate. So densely interconnected is this region, and so longstanding and extensive are its trade, transport and migration networks, that to regard any part of its territory as remote invites scepticism. Indeed, most of the Khmer population in southern Vietnam is found along the rivers and coasts. In a region where water has been the primary means of communication, these sites hardly can be regarded as remote. Instead, it makes sense to examine whether the linkages provided by these bodies of water have been integral to the notable vitality of Khmer identifications in these areas. Similar questions can be asked of the terrestrial landforms where Khmer predominate, which may have allowed residents to communicate with each other by land, providing an alternative to water-based transport. To test such ideas, the study investigates vernacular communications routes, transport technologies, and local patterns of movement to gain a sense of the modes of connectedness and mobility that might characterise the Khmers of this region. It explores the benefits and patterns of mobility associated with religion, education and cultural revitalisation quests as well as the cultural underpinnings of trade and labour migration. This study asks whether connections maintained by Khmer people among themselves, and with others, may have been more central to the flourishing of Khmer communities in this region than previously has been thought.

The Concomitants of Communal Life For the majority of Khmer people the Theravada Buddhist temple long has provided the most significant focus of practical sociality, community and identity. Serving in many Theravadin contexts as a node between the state and local society, the wat historically has been a pivotal and multi-faceted communal institution. Khmer wats in southern Vietnam are sites for Buddhist ordinations, the alms round and monastic education. Life-cycle rites, religious ceremonies and seasonal festivals are similar to those conducted in Cambodia

18

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

and the high attendance levels seem to attest to the flourishing of Khmer religious life. The vigorous survival of this iconic Khmer cultural form is intriguing in a context in which the state does not officially patronise Buddhism, indeed it has circumscribed its scope, and where a variety of creeds and institutions compete with the wat as a locus of Khmer cultural and spiritual affiliation. Vietnamese scholars writing about Khmer wats express anxieties about their compatibility with national integration and development. Wats are seen by one as a venue for traditional education in the arts, religion and morality (Vu 2002); another describes them as a traditional institution of self-government, and centre for rituals, education and cultural preservation (Cuong 2003). More critically, some have characterised Khmer Theravada temples as relics of a totalising variety of primitive communism, no longer able to fulfil the needs of the Khmers in a modern complex society.14  Comments about the past-regarding, autarchic and inward-looking character of these institutions are frequently voiced. One writer contended that the doctrine of karma renders Khmers fatalistic and conservative, impeding the modernisation and industrialisation of rural areas, and that the Khmer attachment to their temples and wasteful ritual expenditures leads to stagnation and impoverishment (Nguyen Xuan Nghia 2003: 37). Contradictorily, others voice reservations about the affiliation of Khmers to Buddhism as a transnational creed: “Cambodian Buddhism pulls the Khmer sentiment away from the plain they inhabit, blocking their cultural mixing and exchange with the Viets” (Mac Duong 1991: 47). Temples are a way by which local Khmers make “regrettable” non-authorised contact with the outside world (Tran Hong Lien 2002: 163) and receive “problematic” visits from monks from outside the country (Cuong 2003: 109; Nguyen and Nguyen 2004: 175–6). These approaches depict Theravada temples as survivals from the past that inoculate the Khmers from the modernising and integrating benefits provided by the Vietnamese state. However, a pervasive view among Khmer monks is that their temples enable them to resist and recover from the corrosive effects of precisely these types of attitudes and reform actions. Filling the gap created by the official denial of access to Cambodia—previously a key destination for religious, educational and social mobility and cultural exchanges— the Theravada temple is frequently construed as the sole avenue remaining to Khmers in Vietnam for the faithful transmission of



Introduction

19

their cultural tradition. As a symbol of identity and centre for cultural reproduction, the Theravada wat is considered by many Khmers to be the principal bulwark left in Vietnam against vividly imagined scenarios of Khmer cultural extinction. It enables the Khmers to preserve an ethnic boundary in a context of asymmetric power relations and ethnic friction. In an region where state attempts to transform the culture, environment and economy often have had adverse effects on the local population, the role played by these institutions in symbolically giving expression to a sense of collective threat is cogent. Another possible approach to the Theravada temple is to see it in environmental context as a mechanism by which available labour can be mobilised to collectively address environmental challenges, share risk, and build social capital and trust. Among other groups in this region, such communal institutions have provided a social safety net and means for collective risk sharing in a setting where state action and inaction have rendered life precarious. As with other religious institutions in this region, Khmer wats may serve as nodes through which members of geographically dispersed social networks channel resources in return for local status and security. A related hypothesis to be explored in this study is that through participation in these communal resource-sharing institutions, people of disparate circumstances and ethnic backgrounds, who settle among Khmers, and indeed those who govern them, might gain credit and esteem on Khmer terms. Alternatively, the wat may serve as a relay point for the cultural currents that course through this region, making them attractive as cosmopolitan centres to the residents of the surrounding hinterland. Returning to the theme of complexity, these institutions also may have roles that differ substantially from place to place, and indeed they are unlikely to be the only focal points around which modern Khmer communities coalesce.15 

The Khmer Krom in History For many Khmer Krom, Theravada temples are monumental evidence of the ancient presence of Khmers in this region. Most abbots and senior community leaders affiliated to a wat know its founding dates and often a story related to its founding. In numerous instances, the dates given for the founding of these institutions predate by centuries the arrival of Vietnamese in this region. Evidence for

20

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

the founding date of a temple comes in various forms: preserved inscriptions; word of mouth stories passed down over the generations; the number of abbots who are known to have held office; dates reportedly recorded in ancient books that are now lost, or else kept, inaccessibly, in Cambodia; or the speculative dating of statues and other vestiges, including even trees in the grounds. Many of these temples are said to date to before Khmers practised Buddhism, when the Khmers followed Hinduism, or the Khmer kings ruled this area. Oral lore records several wats in this region that are said originally to have been the residence of a Khmer king or his official representatives. The reported founding date for the oldest of these institutions is the period of Funan, the ancient Indianised kingdom, which was based in the Mekong Delta between the first century BCE and fifth century CE.16  Khmers living in Vietnam consider themselves to be the direct descendants of the Funanese, whom they describe straightforwardly as Khmers. They also attest that their region belonged to the succeeding Khmer empire, ruled from Angkor. Most Khmers in Vietnam are acutely sensitive to the taboo nature of talking about their locality’s pre-Vietnamese history. Although local museums are full of items dating to the time of Funan and Angkor, Vietnamese history books strive to obfuscate or sever the connection between the contemporary Khmer population and these kingdoms. Nevertheless, Khmers reaffirm that connection in numerous stories about miraculous occurrences, magical vestiges and mythic personages whose origins are traced to the time when this land was part of the Khmer kingdom.

The Khmers in Vietnamese History Scholarship on the history of what Vietnamese call southern Vietnam tends to focus on the ethnic Vietnamese or Kinh. The most influential depiction centres on the Vietnamese “pioneer” settlers who escaped oppressive conditions in the Confucian, feudal and warravaged north to found a “new land” in the south. This land, today’s Nam Bo, supposedly was ungoverned, unpopulated wilderness when first claimed by pioneer migrants from present Central Vietnam over 300 years ago. In this fertile, yet improbably deserted land, these heroes battled wild animals, the jungle and foreign invaders to open



Introduction

21

the land for human settlement and enjoy the fruits of its abundant environment. They embodied a new way of being Vietnamese that was moulded by the region’s distance from centres of high culture, its natural abundance and communicatively open environment, and by its multicultural frontier context.17  This approach to regional history is attuned to the local environment in which identities are formed and is also interactive, stressing mutual shaping between the population and its environment. However, the engaging story of heroic self-transformation wrought by pioneer settlers in their wild new land requires that Khmers first must be erased from the scene, for the story recognises no other group’s precedence and no deep connection to origins or customs. Such an approach offers no scope to treat the Khmers as indigenous, or as autonomous historical agents, who might have their own reasons and bases for action and their own versions of regional history. When Khmers are present at all in histories of this region, they represent three main trends. One is as recruits into Viet-centric accounts. The narrative of history promoted by southern Vietnamese authorities and intellectuals offers local Khmers a support role in adventurous stories of flight from oppression, the opening of new land, and defence against elite and external oppression, whose main protagonists are Vietnamese originating from present-day Central Vietnam. Relations between these Vietnamese and their Khmer “ethnic siblings” (anh em dan toc ) are portrayed as sympathetic, and include collaboration in land pioneering in the Mekong Delta, cultural interchanges and resistance against invaders (Truong Luu 1993: 14–9, 169).18  Whitewashing aspects of a relationship marked by significant conflict, mutual aversion and lingering bitterness (McHale 2013), such stories enable the Khmers to be seen by Vietnamese as proximate, neighbourly, identical and complicit in regional becoming with all ethnic groups in their region. A second view of the Khmer Krom is as victims, pushed into marginality by a succession of exogenous others. The indigenous Khmers were displaced from a favourable position within this region by waves of Vietnamese migrants, ending up as refugees in Cambodia or in the margins. Alternatively they were assimilated into Vietnamese identity through the encroachment of Vietnamese sociocultural institutions. Either way, the relentless march of the frontier has left the vestigial Khmer population in a precarious situation.

22

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

Such approaches, albeit frequently sympathetic to the Khmers, risk creating an impression of the Khmer Krom as helpless before history, or as heading for oblivion, if not already extinct.19  A third view portrays the Khmers of this region as a people who have been able to avoid history altogether. Khmers maintained their integrity only by regrouping in remote or uncontested parts of the region or by withdrawing into closed communities. Aymonier depicted the Khmer survival strategy as one of cultural disengagement: Driven progressively from the east to the west by the Annamites during the two centuries preceding the French conquest, [the Khmers] found themselves confined to certain sandy hillocks of the delta of the great river, having conserved their language, their religion, their customs, their national costume, without mixing too much with the conquering people, who encompassed them and pressed them on all sides (Aymonier 1900: 131).

This depiction resonates in laments about the Khmer Krom frequently voiced by Vietnamese development officials as a stereotypically bounded, culturally aloof people, who are otherworldly, insular and resistant to change. From a romantic ethnological standpoint, these Khmers are deemed to be culturally exotic others who embody an ancient, precious and beleaguered tradition. From a religious standpoint they are regarded as custodians of a potent religious tradition whose purity has been maintained precisely because they are believed to be spatially and socially disengaged and out of time.20  Such views mesh too with self-depictions by many Khmer Krom people, who claim to have resisted incorporation into mainstream Vietnamese networks and institutions and kept their cultural identity intact. This view at least accords agency to the Khmers, but as a force for conservation rather than as participants in the transformation of their region, potentially both shaped by and shaping their region’s landscape and environmental history.

Turmoil and Stasis through the Colonial Period As portrayed in many studies on Cambodia, Khmers traditionally have been small-scale rice growers, living and working for the most part in a rural setting. Until late in the postcolonial period, rice farming remained a subsistence occupation, land holdings were modest in size and land tenure was comparatively egalitarian. The



Introduction

23

agrarian sector was structured by kinship and patron client relations; capitalist agrarian relations were virtually absent. Khmers are associated historically with a stable, but unprofitable agrarian niche in an ethnically differentiated economy, whose more dynamic sectors and occupations have been dominated by non-Khmer groups. Despite seemingly major changes in the super-ordinate political framework over the past century and a half, the key institutions, customs and constraints of Khmer life have been characterised as remarkably enduring.21  The situation in the Khmer-settled lands under French direct rule is generally regarded to have been more turbulent. The French colonial period saw the emergence of a dynamic non-agrarian sector made up of Chinese traders, transporters and rice millers; “Annamite” rubber workers, fishers, technicians and clerical workers; Chettiar money lenders and Cham Muslim traders. Mid-twentieth century observers remarked that Khmers in Cochinchina enjoyed a high standard of living (Malleret 1946: 25; Savani 1955: 119). However, Brocheux’s detailed depiction of this region’s evolving plural society suggests that Khmers, who remained associated uniquely with rice farming, were vulnerable to exploitation and land theft by the betterconnected ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese (Brocheux 1995; see also Biggs 2010). Khmers feature in accounts of colonial development as “the excluded” (Hall, Hirsch and Li 2011), made landless or displaced by more powerful ethnic others. Vietnamese official histories of these developments downplay ethnic frictions between Vietnamese and Khmers. They place the majority of Khmers in the ranks of the poor peasants who were led by the Vietnamese communist party to victory in an ethnically unifying revolutionary struggle against exploiters, feudalists and foreign oppressors (Phan Tuyet 1991; Phan An 1991: 169). However, in the post-war period, ethnic minority status became synonymous with the stigma of poverty, and government reports noted that Khmers again were overrepresented among the landless, rural poor (Mekong Delta Poverty Analysis 2004). Khmer Krom in many localities contextualise their contemporary poverty in terms of a historical inversion that took place in the revolutionary turmoil of the late colonial era, which saw their once large landholdings transferred unjustly to formerly itinerant, destitute and landless ethnic Vietnamese. In contrast with these accounts of a turbulent social order, many Khmer people in Vietnam orient themselves within a stable,

24

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

ethnically delineated social matrix. I have often been told that with few exceptions, Khmers are rice farmers, a traditional occupation that defines what it means to be Khmer. Some female Khmer farmers, speaking to me, scoffed at the proposition that Vietnamese know how to grow rice. According to this view of occupational hierarchies, ethnic Vietnamese generally work for the government. Commerce is dominated by the Chinese. Often it is said that innate capacity or structural exclusion determine these occupational stations. However, Khmers sometimes describe non-agrarian occupations as morally suspect, and their scruples prevent them from being involved in these professions. The Khmers also live predominantly in the countryside, which sometimes is described as exclusively Khmer. For their part the towns are a Vietnamese and Chinese preserve and are considered noisy, dangerous and morally compromising. Finally, Khmers are invariably poor, owning little or no land and rarely owning other capital of any magnitude. This view acknowledges that Khmers are politically and economically weak, but affirms their superior morality and maintenance of their traditional identity. This study aims to critically assess prevailing ideas about the socio-economic status of the Khmer Krom. While rice farming is by all accounts central to Khmer livelihoods, the study also explores their traditional involvement in other livelihood activities and the presence of Khmers in non-agrarian occupations such as trade, processing, wage labour and government service. It questions characterisations of Khmer rurality by investigating the actual settings in which Khmer Krom people live and work and their historical presence in non-rural contexts. It also assesses the equation that frequently is made in Vietnam between the Khmers and poverty. While Khmers are regarded as disadvantaged by political and economic processes that largely have favoured other ethnic groups, one should not neglect the extent to which Khmer society might be internally differentiated, perhaps in ways not apparent according to universal criteria, or acknowledged by Khmer people themselves.

The Patterns of Incorporation The formal transfer of Cochinchina by the French to Vietnamese head of state Bao Dai on 6 June 1949 is commemorated by Khmer nationalists as a dark day when Kampuchea Krom was lost. However, developments on the ground in the Khmer-populated areas



Introduction

25

of Cochinchina before and after that time undoubtedly have had more far-reaching consequences. One of the key challenges for the people of the Mekong Delta in the postcolonial period was coping with over 30 years of sustained military conflict, often divided by historians into three “Indochina wars”. During the first or “French” war (1945–54), fighting between localised religious and ethnic factions in this region was particularly vicious. The second or “American” war in this region (1960–75) was notable for its immensely destructive weapons and mass refugee movements. The Cambodia–Vietnam border conflict of the late 1970s was shorter but it was devastating to border communities. Despite the huge literature on these wars very little is known about Khmer Krom involvement in such struggles. How were Khmers positioned in wars that conventionally are understood in relation to Vietnamese nationalist and social revolutionary agendas? Some of the fiercest battles of these three wars were fought in predominantly Khmer-populated territories. We know from preliminary research that Khmers were implicated in the fighting from the outset (Engelbert 1994; McHale 2013). We also know that the effects of the wars on the Khmer population in some localities were severe (Taylor 2013). The present survey shows that as far as the Khmers are concerned, the epicentre of violence shifted over time with the fiercest fighting initially occurring in the central delta, then expanding in the American War to the coastal fringe, swamps, forests, mountains and into Cambodia proper. The denouement, the Third Indochina conflict, played out along the borders of Cambodia. One effect of these conflicts was population churning that included the permanent displacement of Khmer Krom people from many battlegrounds, but also, unexpectedly, the extension of Khmer people and institutions such as wats into what previously had been predominantly Sino-Vietnamese socio-cultural space. Another postcolonial challenge has been the environmental reengineering of the landscape of the delta, the most intensive phase of which took place between the late 1970s and late 1990s. The re-engineering of the waterscape and economy of the Mekong Delta during the French colonial period is known to have caused major dislocations to Khmer people, but almost entirely unknown are the effects on the Khmers of equally ambitious hydraulic developments in the post-1975 period, which were once again particularly intense in Khmer-populated areas. The most spectacular transformations were

26

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

the conversion of heavily saline rivers and swamps into perennial freshwater zones, the elimination of seasonal variation in water patterns around the coastal fringe, and the conversion of the high floodplain into a heavily regulated water regime of canal, dykes and polders (Biggs et al. 2009). The goals of these schemes were to improve agrarian productivity and stability, however, for many Khmers the evidence is that they have had the contrary effects of undermining the quality of farmers’ lives and rendering livelihoods less stable and predictable. Added to this has been the aggressive promotion by postcolonial governments of new social and cultural models. In the 1950s and 1960s, Khmers in Vietnam were subjected to citizenship, schooling and military service policies that aimed to detach them from a cultural identity as Cambodians and inculcate in them an identity as Vietnamese citizens (Le Huong 1969; Miller 1975). In the “high socialist” period of the late 1970s and 1980s, Khmers were compelled to contribute their time, labour and land to public irrigation works and collectives. From the early 1990s, economic liberalisation, globalisation and rural standardisation policies were in place and causing dislocation and alienation among many of Vietnam’s Khmers (Taylor 2004a, 2007a). All of these changes brought new cultural standards, settlers and techniques into Khmer-settled areas. However, their impacts on Khmer lives, communities and environments have not been studied systematically across this region and are not well understood. Discussions with Khmer people who lived through these events have helped me to examine the social history of the postcolonial period in depth and to uncover nuances in Khmer historical experiences. A focus on the historical specificity of this period also enables me to test the validity of conventional narratives about the pattern of Khmer history in this region. For example, the pervasive depiction of the Khmers as refugees, forever pushed into the margins by an ever-southwards marching Vietnamese frontier is complicated by trajectories of Khmer movement during this time, from villages into the cities, from Cambodia into Vietnam, and from the Mekong Delta into the lands of the northeast. This survey tracks such nonclassical pathways of flight and migration and tries to shed light on the factors that propelled them. At the same time it traces patterns of immobility and asks how remaining in situ was possible during such turbulent times.



Introduction

27

The conventional notion that Khmers have been assimilated by the Vietnamese is also put to the test. For instance, this study asks if Khmers in this region may have had a sense of ownership in processes as varied as wars of national liberation, the introduction of agrarian technologies and markets, immigration programmes, and even Vietnamese literacy classes. Khmers were not necessarily passive recipients of such developments but might have contributed to refashioning them and assimilating them into Khmer-centric projects and schema. The participation by Khmers in mechanisation, intensive agriculture, trade networks, industrial processing and state schooling, challenge stereotypes about the Khmers as conservative or resistant to change. Progressives within the Khmer Krom community may celebrate these activities as modernisation and opening, while conservatives may lament the loss of the old ways. However, this study investigates logics in Khmer engagement in contemporary processes that are consistent with longstanding local patterns of practice. It suggests that the concept of vernacular modernisation (Knauft 2002) may be a useful lens through which to view recent Khmer history in this region rather than the usual tropes of assimilation or resistance.

Kampuchea Krom Narrated Histories of this region told by its Khmer residents are dissonant with those told by outsiders and rely upon distinctive assumptions. Let us return to the cosmogonic vision related at the outset of this chapter. The ongoing decline of Kampuchea Krom is irresistible, so believe many Khmer Krom, who draw upon Buddhism to situate themselves within an unfolding apocalyptic scenario. The land their elders knew was pristine, and its original inhabitants lived insular, long, prosperous and wholesome lives. However, things are getting worse. Crowding, scarcity, war, disease and oppression are increasing, the consequence of human greed and delusion. Premonitions of the coming apocalypse are found in seemingly mundane details such as the declining level of water in a drinking well, the salination of a local river, or the decline in the number and size of plant and animal species, as well as in socio-cultural trends such as the penetration of migrants and state institutions or the spread of the market economy. The apocalypse can be delayed by adherence to the Buddha’s teaching, yet only those who achieve enlightenment in

28

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

time will escape destruction when the world is inevitably consumed by fire. Buddhist cosmology also accounts for the apparently contradictory conviction held by many Khmers that Kampuchea Krom remains unscathed, and that in it Khmers are still numerically predominant. For in the stratified notion of the cosmos advanced by Khmer Buddhist monks the sentient world is divided into multiple layers (than), each the realm of a discrete class of beings. The physical world is similarly stratified and along with it notions of where each group of human beings properly resides. Hence arises the implication that because the Khmers and Vietnamese occupy different topographic strata, their separate claims over the same territory do not cancel each other out. Equally prevalent are Buddhistderived notions of what occupations Khmer people typically practise and where they reside. Markets, cities and various non-rural occupations are sites of material plenty, cultural confusion and profanity. By contrast, to be Khmer means to be a poor but honest farmer. Such a construction problematically denies Khmer identity to people who are wealthy or practise urban-based professions. However, it does imply that the countryside, srok srey, the majority of the territory, is a Khmer-dominated space. Alongside these Buddhist notions of loss and persistence are a host of vernacular stories about the natural environment. Khmer people have a fund of immensely engaging tales about the origin and characteristics of diverse natural phenomena such as rain, storms, lightning, eclipses, floods, droughts and tides. Many stories dwell upon trees, watercourses, mountains and rocks with strange or magical properties. The stories are populated with a cast of vividly depicted animals, mythical creatures and spiritual beings, each in its own domain, yet constantly interacting with humans, with unexpected consequences. The richness of these stories and existence of countless localised versions reveal a propensity to wonder about the natural world that seemingly is nourished by the enchanting explanations that each generation provides to the next. The stories Khmer people tell establish an intimate and multi-stranded connection to place, animate the landscape with human concerns, and teach listeners how to conduct themselves within it. Several of these stories are shared by their non-Khmer neighbours, but a great number appear to be known only to Khmer people and are distinctive in



Introduction

29

their content, style and moral message. As witnessed among minority peoples elsewhere in Southeast Asia, legends are a resource upon which Khmer Krom draw to account for and reinforce their sense of cultural difference (Johnson 2012; South 2003). Equally rich are the stories about events and objects in the natural landscape that are miraculous, yet originate from the human world, representing a fascinating genre of environmental history. Beneath the watery surface of the Mekong Delta lurks a host of submerged royal boats, artefacts, edifices and Buddha statues with magical sovereign powers and a propensity to surface unexpectedly. Also told are epic tales of ordeals, flights, abductions and battles involving male and female heroes, who left in their wake a transformed landscape, magical debris, place names, and a sense of local identity. Many of these stories enact locally specific themes. Such stories have influenced my demarcation of the major sub-regions of Kampuchea Krom, for often they are known only to residents within a restricted geographical area and refer to features, activities or events specific to that region. Although speaking of occurrences in the distant past these tales often relate to recent events and thus provide intriguing clues into the patterns of local history as well as a window onto contemporary concerns. It may be then, that Kampuchea Krom is best grasped as a narrative accomplishment. Although stories often feature a country that is disintegrating under the pressure of pitiless forces, the narrative of its loss pervasively orders contemporary Khmer Krom identities and outlines a method for its revival. Just as prolific, and potent, are stories of its endurance, which allow innovations and borrowings to be subsumed, without any implied loss to the integrity of the whole. Coexisting with these meta-narratives are personalised and geographically intimate Khmer understandings of place, mediated by distinctive toponyms and stories. In a way shared by indigenous peoples in other contexts (Basso 1999; Cruickshank 2005), these tales render the environment and people’s place in it locally meaningful. One cannot consequently dismiss the idea of Kampuchea Krom as a mere fiction, for stories are among the principal means by which Khmers experience and shape the natural and social environment of which they are part. Moreover, it is probable that their stories of loss and persistence have also shaped the ways others interact with the Khmers and comprehend the region. We surely see the reverberations

30

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

of Khmer people’s own self-understandings in the tragic but not well-documented stories related by French colonial scholars about the displacement of Khmers from the northeast, in Vietnamese state officials’ despair at Khmer resistance to modernisation, and in modern-day Vietnamese locals’ faith in Khmer occult powers. The stories about Kampuchea Krom presented in this study therefore offer glimpses into a Khmer perspective on this region that may indeed have been more powerful in the making of its history than hitherto suspected.



Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago

31

1 Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago A significant proportion of Khmer people in Vietnam lives in a broad arc along the south-eastern coast of the Mekong Delta, within an area known to geographers as the coastal complex (Nguyen Huu Chiem 1995). This arc of predominantly Khmer settlement sweeps south from the mouth of the Mekong River in present-day Tra Vinh Province, through Soc Trang Province to Bac Lieu, interrupted only by the ten kilometre-wide mouth of the Bassac River. Over 100 kilometres long from north to south, at its widest it extends 70 kilometres inland from the coast. Within this arc is found the highest concentration of Khmer people in Vietnam,1  and over half of the Khmer temples. It is considered to be one of the oldest sites of Khmer settlement in Vietnam, with scores of temples that are said by locals to predate Vietnamese presence in the Mekong Delta. It is a lively Khmer culture area with large wats, big congregations, and very active ritual and festive life. The focus of this chapter is on the northern half of the coastal complex, a flange of flat, salt-impregnated land lying between the mouths of the Mekong and Bassac Rivers and bounded by the ocean to the east (see Map 1). It is encompassed by the Khmer-named provinces of Preah Trapeang and Long Hor, known to Vietnamese as Tra Vinh and Vinh Long. For many observers, this is the quintessential Khmer region of Vietnam. The fascination shown by researchers 31

32

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

and tourists in the exotic arts and religion of local Khmer people mingles liberally with the horror expressed by state officials at these same locals’ alleged backwardness, disadvantage and incapacity to cope with the realities of modern life. The region is considered remote, it is environmentally poorly endowed, and efforts to develop it have had little success. The marginality of the region, and the insularity and recalcitrance of its Khmer population are the dominant motifs in the scholarly literature about this part of the world. By contrast, the Khmer people of the northern part of the coastal complex enjoy a reputation among Khmer speakers for their high education, purist maintenance of their cultural identity, and formidable tradition of opposition to assimilation. Khmers in other parts of Vietnam frequently defer to this region as the most important Khmer political and cultural centre outside of Cambodia. It is considered ancient, with at least six temples said by abbots and educated locals to be over 1,000 years old. It is seen as a place of high culture, embodying excellence in Buddhist doctrine, Khmer literacy and pedagogic elaboration. It is also known for ritual austerity and its large, highly active and engaged Buddhist lay communities. Many from this locality have made celebrated contributions to national life in Cambodia as nationalists, intellectuals and politicians. Others are renowned for their contributions as Khmer “cultural missionaries”, teaching in wats throughout the Mekong Delta.2  This chapter investigates how Khmers of this region live and how they characterise their own situation. In light of the contradictory representations of their position as both spatially marginal and civilisationally central, special attention is devoted to how they orient themselves cosmologically and in relation to other cultural centres. The ecological conditions that underpin their existence on the littoral are also of great interest. The chapter describes how Khmers have conceptualised and adapted to the environment of this maritime region and discusses their responses to state attempts to transform their way of life. It explores the religious resources that they draw upon in projects of vernacular modernisation and in defence of their cultural sovereignty. Recognising that Khmers of this region not only have survived in these conditions, but have carved out a position of influence in the Khmer and Vietnamese-speaking worlds, the chapter also looks at their histories of engagement with places and projects well beyond their coastal abodes.



Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago

33

A Littoral Archipelago Until the last decade of the twentieth century, during the annual wet season the coastal complex was covered by water to depths of up to one metre. Floods from the Mekong River contributed only minimally to this build up of water. Elderly Khmer residents recall that in the mid-1950s, the flood surge lasted just a matter of weeks. Most of this accumulated surface water came from local precipitation. By the end of the rainy season, which lasts from May to December, the majority of the region was covered in water at an average depth of 50 centimetres. These conditions were ideal for growing a number of traditional varieties of long-stemmed rice, with a growing season that averaged six months. However, the great superficiality and length of inundation meant that there were few places dry enough for residents to live. Living conditions become more difficult during the five-month dry season, when the area turns into a saline desert. The soil surface cracks, then crumbles to fine powder in the scorching sun; salt rises to the surface of the clay soil; and brackish water fills the lowlands, salt marshes and watercourses. Although the dry season is a good time for fishing, agricultural production is restricted and drinking water becomes extremely scarce. Just how this alternately inundated and arid region has been able to sustain such a large Khmer population is a conundrum. The answer lies with a distinctive topographic feature called the phno. These are elevated ridges of coarse sandy soil (dei k’sat), between one to five metres high. The longest are up to 40 kilometres long. The ridges run in gentle arcs parallel to the coast. They lie in parallel formation to each other, and are often closely clustered. Some phno have two or more branches radiating from a central ridge. Science has an explanation for these curious formations that stretch in a belt down the delta’s eastern fringe. They are ancient coastal dunes, created when alluvial debris deposited into the sea was shaped into dunes by waves, tidal action and currents. As the delta prograded seawards, the dunes were stranded inland and new dunes were created. The furthest inland phno lies 75 kilometres from the present-day coast, and was likely formed around 4,000 years ago.3  For Khmer people throughout the coastal complex, the term phno has the socio-centric meaning of village or settlement. A museum worker in Soc Trang explained: “If you are in the fields,

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The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

Plate 1.1 Ba Giam village, Tra Cu District

and say you are going to the phno, it means that you are going into the village, to the place where people live.” A Pali teacher who lives in the district of T’khau said that phno refers to “the high ground, the place where people live and build houses, where trees are grown, and where general livelihood activities take place”. In short, the term phno corresponds to the social world, to the sphere of culture.4  The phno are the basis for a unique pattern of population distribution, not found elsewhere in Khmer-inhabited lands. Almost all Khmer settlements in the northern part of the coastal complex lie atop the phno.5  If one looks at a satellite photograph of the province of Tra Vinh, one can see the population concentrated within neatly defined arcs of continuous settlement that are aligned in parallel formation. The majority of these settlement arcs are slender, from a dozen to a few hundred metres wide. Many have a feather shape, with wisps of settlement branching out from the main “stem” (Plate 1.1). Available space on every dune in the region is occupied by houses and gardens. The houses of members of an extended family, which includes different generations and affines, usually are arrayed side by side within a phum, a fenced or hedged multi-residence compound with a shared access lane, gate and yard (Plate 1.2).6  These fenced residential compounds in turn stand side by side, forming a continuous grid of settlement across the dune that terminates abruptly where the dune falls away.



Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago

35

Plate 1.2 Fenced extended family compound, Tra Vinh

With few exceptions, Buddhist wats are all located atop the phno, commonly at the point where the land is highest. As the social, cultural and religious hubs of Khmer communities, wats are situated in the heart of residential neighbourhoods, sharing the same narrow band of perennially dry ground as the houses of the people who built them. These collectively built institutions occupy more space on the phno than any other single structure. Their grounds of packed and evenly levelled sand often extend from one edge of a dune to the other. The grounds contain the monks’ quarters and eating hall, meditation cells, crematorium and stupas housing the ashes of prominent villagers and former abbots. Some wats in this region serve in excess of 2,000 households and have over 100 monks in residence. The wat contains classrooms where local novices undertake the elementary level of the Buddhist curriculum and village children learn Khmer literacy, taught by monks and educated laymen, or achars. Khmer cosmogonic myths touch on the origin of these landforms and their significance to those who live in this region. One was told to me by a Pali teacher in Ba Giam village, T’khau. He said

36

The Khmer Lands of Vietnam

the term dei phno (phno land) refers to not just a few ridges of high land such as in his and neighbouring villages. It refers to all the high land in Suvannaphum, the Golden Land, recorded in history as one of the first places to which Buddhism was propagated: Thousands or millions of years ago, the world was covered entirely by ocean. When the water subsided, phno were the first land to emerge. As the only high land there was, together they comprised the ancient lands of Suvannaphum. The phno were islands separated by the sea. They were not big, but were big enough for groups of people to live on, make a living and multiply, each to their own phno. This is the origin of countries. As the sea continued to subside, all the phno eventually joined up to become the continent of Southeast Asia.

The tale provides a glimpse into the value placed on land by residents of a maritime region that is surrounded by water and subject to seasonal inundations. At its most basic, the phno are islands in a great ocean. However, the tale suggests that Khmers do not consider their villages to be isolates. Instead, they are situated within an expansive transoceanic formation. Orienting the Khmers as denizens of the legendary continent of Suvannaphum, the tale also reconceptualises this continent, in conformity with local conditions, as an archipelago. The Pali teacher’s notion of the phno as islands is commonplace and can be seen in the place names given to individual temples and villages. For instance, monks in Wat Kos Soai, in Cau Ngang District told me: The name of this temple means Mango Island Temple. In the past, this area was an island, surrounded by water. On the island was just one giant mango tree. In time the water retreated and the island was no more, just the tree was left. But the tree has since died.

The name of Wat Kos Keo Siri near Tra Vinh town (in Vietnamese Wat Ben Ko) means Keo’s beautiful exalted island, according to its elderly laypeople: This was formerly an island in the ocean. People who came here thought it a good place to live. It was large, with plenty of land for people to settle, make a living and found a temple. Keo is the name of the man who granted the land to build the temple.7 



Coastal Dune Belt: Monastic Sovereignty in the Forested Archipelago

37

Stories of the dissemination of Buddhism to this region reinforce the conception of the phno as part of an archipelago. Wat Tro Preah Bat (Support the Buddha’s Foot) is built at the site of a footprint of Sakyamuni Buddha. A monk residing in the vicinity told me how it was found: The footprint was discovered in a curious location. At that place was a high sandy hillock, much higher than the surrounding areas, on which grew a single bodhi tree. No other plants would grow there. If a cow wandered onto the hillock, it would die. Children tending cattle discovered a footprint at the site. They told old people in the village who said it must be a footprint of the Buddha. A monk in neighbouring Soai Cos temple went into meditation and confirmed that it was the left footprint of the Buddha, made on his travels around the world.

My interlocutor thought that this place was one of the five original places that made up Suvannaphum. One footprint of the Buddha was at the top of a mountain peak in Sri Lanka. Another was at Preah Vihaer on the Thai–Cambodian border. In his mind he visualised the Buddha crossing the ocean, striding from island to island on his travels. Son, a layman whom I met at Wat Tro Preah Bat, had meditated when he was a monk and learned that the Buddha had left three footprints here on the east coast. His right foot had stepped on a mound of high land near Wat Phno Rang, his left foot trod here at Wat Tro Preah Bat, and his right foot landed again in Bac Lieu, where the land was also high. In meditation, Son saw that no people had been living here at the time, just animals. The land on which the Buddha trod had been entirely surrounded by ocean. This account reinforces a conception of the settlements of this area as belonging to an archipelago. Surrounded by ocean, these islands are linked to each other by the travels of the Buddha, who undertook a terrestrial journey striding from peak to peak. Although seemingly insular from a maritime perspective, the localities of this archipelago comprise a terrestrial confederation unified by the itinerary taken by the Buddha. The myth erases the marginality allotted to these settlements in Vietnamese and Cambodian national geography, repositioning them within Suvannaphum, a vast chain of islands that stretches to Sri Lanka. It accentuates the height of local components of the archipelago, giving them equivalence with peaks

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in Thailand, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. It suggests a conceptualisation of place that is forged by pedagogic journeys, revelations and stories rather than by maritime linkages or secular political or economic networks.

Inhabiting a Stratified World As mentioned explicitly by the Pali teacher, the term phno, or dei phno, means land which is high. This conception of these landforms is commonplace. Marginal as the height differential often is, they are distinguished clearly from the surrounding landscape. An abbot once told me: In people’s minds, it is clear that the fields are lower than the phno; the phno is higher than the fields.8  Lower again than the fields are o, or water-filled depressions. Rice will not grow there. Instead, people grow rushes or lotus plants. Beng are like o, but much larger. They are marshy and also used to grow lotus lilies and the like. Deeper still are the rivers and canals. 9 

According to people at the Tra Vinh museum of Khmer culture, the height of the phno is what made their region habitable: “In the past, water covered this region for up to half of the year. Until recently, many places remained under water year round. People built their houses on the high land to stay above the water level.” Some locals believe, with justification, that this locality has more phno than any other. A retired Khmer cadre from Tra Cu recalled his elders had told him that Tra Vinh has 99 phno. He speculated that it was one of the oldest inhabited places in the Mekong Delta because its land was higher than elsewhere, enabling people to settle there earliest. This view has currency among Khmers to the south of the Bassac. A museum worker in Soc Trang said she had heard that the land in Tra Vinh is older than Soc Trang, and it has more phno. A resident of Bac Lieu told me that Khmers had been living in Tra Vinh since the era of Funan. There, Khmers could reside on the elevated tidal dunes, whereas Bac Lieu was once jungle and swamp, making residence in that area more recent and dispersed. The height of the land upon which Khmers live frequently is cited as evidence that Khmers had established themselves in the Mekong Delta before the Vietnamese. A Khmer man, a senior



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party leader in the province, now retired, offered an illustration of this view: Vietnamese live along the banks of the rivers and by the coast, wherever the land is low. When they first arrived, they could live only on the low land. The high land was already taken by Khmers. The Khmers are on the high land because we were here first.

Khmers in this region are vividly aware of inhabiting a stratified world whose constitutive elements and beings occupy separate levels. According to the abbot of Wat Knong Srok: In Khmer thinking, this is according to Buddhism, humans live upon the land. Water lies below the land and supports it. In turn, water rests upon air. The Khmer terms for expressing this are: Kyo tro tuk [air supports water] Tuk tro dei [water supports land] Dei tro munou [land supports people]

The existence of this elemental hierarchy is demonstrated each time it rains: Have you noticed that whenever it rains, first it always is preceded by gusts of wind? It is the air blowing up from below. You cannot see it, but you can see the trees thrashing. Only after the air has blown does the water come. It is pushed upwards by the air. Then the wind stops, the rain falls, and eventually the rain ceases too. The water that falls onto the land then flows back to the sea underneath.10 

The water that lies below the human world is the domain of ghosts. Illustrating this perception, an old man in Wat Kos Som told me that just beyond the grounds of his wat, the land is lower and used to be covered in water to his waist: People were afraid to go there at night because it was haunted by ghosts. The ghosts were people who had died at sea. The sea once came up to that point. Someone once found part of the wooden beam from a ship that had sunk there. This was thought to be one of the shipwrecked ships whose dead crewmen haunted the swampy area.

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Tales abound in this region of wats that once were poorly sited in low-lying areas that were plagued by ghosts. They would attack laypersons and the monks, forcing the relocation of the wat. One was told to me by the abbot of Wat Khuon, a temple said to have been built 1,000 years ago and whose name means platform, or high land. The abbot said that formerly the temple had been located about half a kilometre away: But there were many ghosts in that place and they had caused havoc, stealing rice from cooking pots, knocking over pots and pans when they were on the fire and once throwing a child into the fire where it would have died had somebody not rescued it. As a result the temple had to be moved because there were too many ghosts in its original location. This happened in other temples in this vicinity as well.

In each of these stories, refuge from ghost attacks comes from moving to higher ground. Low inundated land is the realm of ghosts; high dry land provides sanctuary and peace. The stories reiterate that only on high and dry land can humans flourish and they concede the lowlands to ghosts. The stories illustrate a situational consciousness of inhabiting a stratum in a vertically layered world. They orient Khmer settlements in a hierarchy that conforms to classical interpretations of Buddhist cosmology (Praya Lithai 1982). Humans live in a middle world between Heaven and Hell. Above them is heaven, than leu, consisting of multiple levels, where reside the teovada and other higher ethereal beings. The central level, mundoul, is the world of humans, plants and animals. Hell, than norok, below, is also comprised of multiple strata where reside ghosts and demons. There live the souls of people who committed evil deeds against others in a previous lifetime. This situational consciousness is dramatised in seasonal rites. At the outset of the rainy season, rites to honour the neak ta, ancestral community spirits, are staged for three days in every Khmer hamlet. They conclude with the release of offering-laden boats into streams at the edges of settlement. As a woman in Wat Knong Srok explained, “When the rites are over, a pig head and other offerings are taken from the shrine and released into the stream on the edge of the settlement. In that way, the ghosts and demons are conveyed back to where they came from, and all of the bad things are washed away.” During the festival of pchum ben (or bon donta) in the middle



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of the rainy season retreat, ancestors and ghosts are released from Hell and enjoy a few days of reprieve feasting with their living descendants in the village. On the third day of the festival, they are sent back to where they came from, again via boats. Boats made of banana trunk skins are loaded with rice, salt, incense, and money and sent down the river to convey the ancestors home. During the three months of vossa, the Buddhist Lent, a time when the phno are encircled by water, resident monks are required to remain within the grounds of the wat, which are enclosed by a high wall. Their retreat from the world at a time when the rice is growing in the surrounding flooded fields is conceived of as an ascetic ordeal that augments the capacity of the monks to serve as vessels of merit transference during the rites of pchum ben and kathin, the post-vossa robe-offering ceremony, which take place towards the end of the rainy season. The purified monks are compared with boats, able to convey merit made by the living across the river to the world of the dead. The tallest building, the preah vihear, serves as the ordination hall and the main site for these merit transference rituals. It stands above all other buildings atop an elevated platform of sand. Buried beneath it is a perimeter of nine consecrated si ma stones that keep out evil spirits and also are said to prevent water from entering from below. The phno belt in Tra Vinh and Vinh Long is surrounded by the Bassac and Mekong rivers and the South China Sea. Smaller rivers also transect the region, running between the ridges. They drain the land and are exploited for fish, however, they are not favoured by Khmer people for settlement, since they are periodically filled with brackish water and the groundwater is not suitable for drinking. Their primary function is for transport. The waterways constitute an alternative transport system for phno dwellers and are used to ferry the products of the phno and inter-ridge fields to markets. However, the river transport network has long been in the hands of non-Khmer minorities in this region: Teochius until the mid-1970s and latterly Viets. Indeed, it is rare for Khmer families in this province to own even a small wooden rowboat of the kind that is so commonplace elsewhere in the Mekong Delta. Khmer people in Cau Ngang depict the main river in that district [which they refer to as Prek Phno Daek] as a wild and watery place beyond the fringes of Khmer civilisation. Monks in Wat Theu Thmei told me that the river divided the Khmer hamlets:

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It used to be a path taken by elephants and buffaloes through the forest. Over time the earth was trodden low and it filled with water that was plied by crocodiles and fish. It then was settled by Yuon [Vietnamese]. These people were refugees who travelled by boat and lived along rivers.

In this description, the river is depicted as a low-lying and wild place, a thoroughfare for wild animals and unfamiliar cultural others. This view of the rivers resonates with stories about the inundated areas that surround the phno settlements as places infested with ghosts that interfere with monastic life. Here we see the elaboration of a fairly systematic distinction between the high and dry Khmersettled places, which are islets of civility and safety and the lower inundated regions which are the abode of uncontrollable ghosts, wild animals and cultural others.

Life-giving Landforms in a Maritime Environment Stories that allude to the maritime character of this locality also raise a pressing problem. The water that encircles these imagined islets of the coastal fringe is heavily affected by salt. Local precipitation once constituted the sole source of water for agriculture. However, the rainy season in this part of the delta is short and the rain that falls onto the low-lying ground of the coastal plain mingles with seawater. How in this context has agriculture been possible? The phno themselves provide the solution to this problem. They play a vital role in capturing rainwater for agrarian use. Phno residents in Tra Vinh and Soc Trang observe that the dunes serve as natural dams that trap rainwater between them and prevent it from draining into the sea. The array of ridges that covers the coastal complex creates a series of rainfed lakes that run parallel to each other in the depressions between the dunes. Until the early 1980s, one rice crop per year was cultivated in these shallow seasonal lakes. The rice was sown soon after the rains commenced and was harvested some six months later when the water between the ridges finally retreated. During the traditional growing season, the flooded fields were a rich source of fish and other life. These aquatic resources were easily accessible to phno residents who could wade with nets, spears and traps through water that rarely was more than waist deep. In the dry season, cattle were released to roam dry parts of the inter-ridge area,



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where they grazed on the rice stubble and natural grasses. Permanently inundated beng, or swamps continue to be exploited for rushes and a variety of animal life. The rivers provide fish, which are most numerous during the dry season when the salinity levels in the rivers are at their peak. The phno also serve as natural barricades that prevent salt water intruding into rice-growing areas. This is especially true in the extreme coastal fringe where the rainfed lakes in the inter-ridge depressions are prone to contamination by salt water. Wat Ta Rum lies close to a wide permanently brackish coastal river in the eastern part of Tra Cu District. It is on a narrow, well-defined sand dune, around 160 metres wide, which drops into fields at each side. The ridge of sand on which the wat stands is more than three kilometres long. Laypersons at the wat told me that in the 1960s, well before hydraulic works began, the long phno served as a barrier, preventing salt water from penetrating to the west. The land to the seaward side of the phno was always salty or brackish. However, to the interior, the water was fresh enough during the rainy season to grow rice. The dam and dyke system comprised by the phno is a vital part of what has made possible the great population concentrations and cultural elaborations for which the coastal complex is renowned. This natural hydraulic system allowed for this wide band of salineaffected coastal land to become agriculturally productive long before the introduction in the early 1980s of canals, dykes and sluice gates. By combining rice production with exploitation of the resources that abounded in the brackish waters of this coastal region, residents of the phno settlements could secure a stable living throughout the year. These rich and seasonally varied resources were accessible to humans thanks only to the adjacent phno, which served as an all-weather residential platform. The phno is also a service platform for the agrarian economy, a site for storing farm equipment and corralling animals. Rice, berries, vegetables, rushes and fish are laid out along the sandy ridges for desiccation (Plate 1.3). Haystacks and rice granaries are maintained on the high dry land. Livestock are penned there and watered from the wells and ponds. Many phno have small sawmills and joineries for processing their wood resources in situ. Today, large foreign owned garment and seafood-processing factories have been built along the high land in many parts of the phno belt, employing local Khmer youths and making use of the sand ridges that long have sustained a variety of small-scale Khmer processing facilities.

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Plate 1.3 Rushes laid out for drying along a phno

The phno also serve as transport conduits. While their height prevents inundation, rain is absorbed into the sand or runs off their sloping sides. This makes them ideal year round for travelling. A maze of shaded tracks connects households on the phno and a path follows the high ground along the length of each dune. Traditionally, this was a sandy path that enabled people to visit each other or get to the local wat, pond, or market by foot, oxcart or pony. Khmer people in settlements throughout Preah Trapeang kept ponies for drawing lightly loaded passenger carts. The phno today form the basis for much of the inter-village and inter-district road system in the coastal region. One can move between a great many of the Khmer-populated areas of Preah Trapeang along such tracks or roads that follow the high ground. Contemporary roads are sealed and hum with motor vehicles, yet they follow the routes along the dune ridges that have served local transport needs for hundreds of years. In a region where water transport predominates, the land routes of the coastal phno belt comprise a vernacular transport network that connects residents of this region to each other and the world beyond.



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Freshwater Oases in a Saline Desert Another explanation for why residence is concentrated on the phno is that it solves the problem of freshwater scarcity. Until the 1980s, during the dry season, surface water in the coastal complex was not fit for drinking. Salt water filled the depressions between the ridges and the rivers were brackish. Only at the western extremity of the phno belt, around Vung Liem and Tra On, 70 kilometres from the coast, do the rivers run fresh year round. As for the groundwater, test wells show that the subsoil water throughout the coastal complex is too salty to drink throughout the year (Anderson 1978). The freshwater aquifer lies several hundred metres below the surface, putting it out of reach of residents until recent decades. The sole exception to the adverse groundwater conditions are the phno. These sand ridges are natural freshwater reservoirs. The source of this water is local precipitation. The rain that falls on the dune system during the months of the rainy season is absorbed and retained in the sand of the dune. Owing to the fact that fresh water is lighter than salt water, the fresh water remains atop the layer of saline groundwater without mingling. It forms a lens of permanently drinkable water similar to those found on the low-lying atolls of the Pacific Ocean.11  This remarkable property of the phno as a natural device for trapping and retaining fresh water close to the surface is what has made the coastal region habitable. Access to this trapped rainwater is gained by driving ponds, andon, into the sand far enough to penetrate the freshwater lens but not so deep as to break into the underlying saltwater layer. Dune sand is not hard to dig and has the additional property of filtering water that passes through it (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1   Pond for extracting trapped rain water from the phno

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Nowhere is the importance of this lens of subsurface fresh water more evident than in the districts of T’khau and Phno Daek in Tra Vinh Province. These districts are both close to the coast and they are home to high concentrations of Khmer people in villages that can be up to seven kilometres from the nearest river. Residence in such areas is only possible thanks to the large reserves of fresh groundwater found at a shallow depth below the earth’s surface. A middle-aged Khmer woman living next to Wat Phno Rang in Phno Daek observed: This land is very dry; there is no surface water on the phno. It never floods here and we are a long way from the sea. Phno Rang is high, as high as it gets. It is very hard to grow things, especially during the dry season. But there is water under the ground; if you dig anywhere around here you get to water. This is where people obtain their water. The water level fluctuates, from between one metre below the surface in the wet season, to up to seven metres deep in the dry season. But it never dries up.

Before modern materials and markets made it feasible to pipe water or build rainwater tanks, people in a given neighbourhood collaborated to dig an andon, or pond, at a high point in the dune. Andon were the main dry-season drinking source and were used year round for washing, irrigation and watering animals. The water in them was always fresh. No matter how high the usage during the dry season, the water was recharged by seepage of trapped rainwater out the adjacent dune. Wealthy families dug their own ponds, often surrounded by a circular mounded lip on which they grew vegetables that were irrigated by pond water. The mounded walls of these ponds are breached at one point to permit access to a narrow earthen ramp that leads down to the water’s edge. Such ponds still are in active use and are particularly visible in Tra Cu and Cau Ngang Districts of Tra Vinh Province (Plate 1.4). Equally prevalent were collectively dug water reservoirs. In the 1970s, it was not uncommon for between 30 to 50 households to share a single pond. One reason for sharing water was to pool the labour required to dig and maintain a pond in the sandy soil. Ponds of all types in the Khmer settlements of the eastern delta typically were not lined with stone, owing to the scarcity of stones in the



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Plate 1.4 Family pond in Phno Daek District

alluvial plain. Rarely would a pond be less than three metres in diameter, since the soft walls easily collapsed. Ponds required regular re-excavation to remove collapsed sand from their base. Depth had to be carefully limited so as not to penetrate to the underlying groundwater. Another reason for collectively sharing water is that the water quality varies from one area to another. One large pond in the aptly named hamlet of Phno Andon (Pond Village), T’khau, served three separate hamlets owing to the quality of its water, which was much sweeter than that in the dunes of the two neighbouring hamlets. Collectively dug ponds called sras are found in the grounds of almost all of the wats in this region. Formerly most temples had two functioning sras. These communal ponds were used by the sizeable community of resident monks as a drinking source and for bathing and washing clothes and dishes. Neighbouring villagers also used them as a dry-season water source of last resort. An elderly man in Wat Can Chon Phnom Penh in Tieu Can recalled that people from

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the neighbourhood would come to the temple pond to take water and carry it home on shoulder poles: In my youth I used to cart water to my home by the market, about 300 metres away. The water in the temple pond was much sweeter than all the other water sources in the locality. The river water was slightly brackish—it was not as good to drink as the water in the sras.

Sras water is said to have been the sweetest of all available water. This in part was a result of carefully selecting the site for a temple in a section of the phno where the water quality was known to be good. The perceived purity of the water in the temple pond also was a function of ritual segregation and purification. According to the abbot of Wat Knong Srok: In the past, before modern water sources, people who lived near the wat would come to the pagoda to draw water from its sras. The water in the wat was considered cleaner because it was protected and no one bathed in it. It was kept clean for the monks’ own use. Also, the water was considered spiritually purer. Every day, the monks would chant and this would charge everything in the wat with sacred power. People had the conception that anything within the wat’s grounds was spiritually charged with the power of the chants recited by the monks. In the past, the water that is used for ritual blessings was taken from the sras. It is first stirred by the monks with a leaf branch while chanting. This stirs the sutras into the water. The water brings good luck and chases away bad luck.

This emphasis on collectively maintained water reserves can be seen even in areas where alternative dry-season sources of fresh water exist. The Khmer settlements of Kompong Spien or Cau Ke District enjoy the freshest surface water conditions of the entire phno belt. Lying some 60 kilometres from the sea, this area is served by rivers that run fresh almost the entire year. Several wats are on the rivers themselves, however, the largest and reputedly oldest are atop the phno. The phno are considered superior places to reside because they are protected from the mild floods that affect this inland district annually. Also, unlike the rivers that experience a short brackish season, the water retained in the phno is fresh year round. As in



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Plate 1.5 Sras outside Wat Veluvone

the rest of the phno belt, wats in this district formerly maintained collective ponds for communal dry-season use. An example of this is the magnificent tree-lined sras that stands adjacent to Wat Veluvone, one of the oldest temples in Cau Ke (Plate 1.5). The largest surviving ponds in this region are associated with the legend of a former Khmer king, Botumavong, whom locals say reigned in Preah Trapeang during the thirteenth century. The large tree-lined sras beside Wat Ang, known in Vietnamese as Ao Ba Om (Lady Om’s Pond), is known in Khmer as Sras Serey (Female Pond). The Khmer legend records that King Botumavong’s wives formerly used to bathe in a nearby dangerous crocodile-infested river. To protect them, he had this enclosed pond dug for the exclusive use of the female members of his court. A larger pond, Sras Proh (Male Pond), now dried up, was dug just to the south, next to Wat Botumavong, for the use of the king’s troops. Wat Botumavong itself contains vestiges of a large ancient brick platform, which locals consider the site of the king’s palace. The entire palace complex, including the royal ricefields, is surrounded by an earthen wall that is said to have protected the court from attack from the sea.12 

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Several other sites scattered around Tra Vinh Province are associated with this legendary king. They include Trapeang Veng in Cau Ngang, the largest pond in this region, which reportedly served as the water source for a sub-regional troop detachment. Others include places where the king travelled to administer justice, have his feet washed, trade coconuts, and where he lost his royal scarf while fighting the enemy.

Ways of Integrating the Archipelagic Settlements As we have seen, the phno are conceptualised as islands of civility, which are encircled by water that is considered wild and dangerous. The unique ways that these sandy landforms interact with water have enabled their residents to eke out a living on the coastal fringe and enjoy significant material security throughout the year. Providing also a source of water that is considered pristine and safe, these landforms appear to have facilitated the emergence of a remarkably selfsufficient population and a conception of identity that emphasises separateness and isolation from the wider society. Yet this very insularity, which is materially embodied and imaginatively emphasised, leads towards a new question. If really as insular as supposed, how have residents of these disparate settlements been able to achieve the high degree of common identification and unity of purpose in dealings with perceived outsiders for which they are renowned? Many local Khmers have pondered this question. Their stories sketch out how a condition of primordial insularity was overcome. The physical geography goes some way towards unravelling this conundrum. As we have seen the phno themselves are not true islands. Many are elongated formations that sustain more than one settlement. The longest may support up to several villages strung out in a continuous strip of settlement. As described previously, many phno have a branch-like formation, where two or more dunes diverge from a single point. Since travellers also follow the ridges, the points where ridges converge are the natural communication hubs. Not coincidentally, the principal urban centres in the eastern coastal fringe, its largest markets, and its oldest, most illustrious Khmer wats lie at the point where several dunes converge. Notable in this regard is the provincial capital of Tra Vinh, which lies at the junction of four long phno that extend for several kilometres in different directions. Lined with roads and continuous



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settlement, these phno connect Tra Vinh in a spoke formation to dozens of Khmer villages, making it the natural urban hub of its region. Known in Khmer as Preah Trapeang, Tra Vinh was one of the regional capitals of the Khmer kingdom, with its own courtappointed governor.13  This is the site where the legendary Khmer king Botumavong is believed to have had his palace, reservoirs, garrisons and fortifications. Home to more than a dozen wats, several among Vietnam’s oldest, it is the principal cultural centre for all Khmers in the province and remains to this day a peak centre for the monastic-based Pali education system in Vietnam. It long has been headquarters for the provincial monks association, which oversees the activities of the 140-plus temples of the province and over 3,000 monastics. Nevertheless, the connections provided by these physical formations also have been used by outside powers to divide and dominate the people they link. Tra Vinh has served as the main administrative centre of the northern half of the coastal complex under successive colonial and postcolonial governments. The main government offices, schools and market of the province are located at the site where the dunes converge. Tra Vinh airport (now disused), the provincial bus station, private transport companies, gas stations and several military installations also are situated atop the long sand dunes that converge just to the south of the main market. An additional factor making Tra Vinh convenient as a site for colonising the Khmers of the coastal dune belt is the immediate proximity to this dune configuration of two large waterways, including the Mekong River. Another reason why the unity of Khmers in this region cannot be explained reductively as an effect of physical geography is that a great many of the Khmer settlements are not linked by land. For example, the abbot of Wat Can Leang Se [Place of Horses Temple], near Binh Phu market, spoke of communications with other villages that were once intermittent and dependent on seasonal water levels: This settlement is on high land. According to what the former abbot told me, in the rainy season it was surrounded by areas of deep water, beng, making travel to other places difficult. In the dry season, the water dried up and drained away. At that time, people from other districts would come to this place to talk among themselves and to race horses. The fastest horses from each settlement would be brought here and they would be raced against each other.

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Separated by water, many of the phno settlements in the past are said to have had an autarchic character. This situation is illustrated by the Khmer name for Cau Ngang District, Phno Daek, which means “divided phno”. Explaining the place name, the abbot of Wat Kossom, Cau Ngang told me: In the past people lived on patches of high land separate from each other. The settled areas were not linked to each other by any means. Even trees did not run continuously from place to place. There was nothing between settlements.

Each settlement had its own neak ta, the spirit of a meritorious deceased person, who protected those within the settlement. According to the abbot, relations between the neak ta of Phno Deak were characterised by division and conflict: The neak ta of each area used to fight each other. They were in conflict, like the people of the different settlements that they oversaw. However, now they are at peace with each other. Phno Daek had a powerful leader, the leader of the army, whose name was Neak Ta Kabaal ben tieal. He fought against the enemies (satreu). They came from all around. Finally he united the warring parties so all lived peacefully in harmony with each other. People make offerings to him in the third lunar month, around the time of the Khmer New Year to recall his merit in bringing peace. He is powerful. He protects all of the people in the entire district. I was once punished by him. I was still young and misbehaved a lot. Once I did something to disturb his resting place. When I returned home that day I found that I could not talk. The Neak Ta had made me mute.14 

This anecdote is about the conflict between the leaders of insular groups that was overcome by the ascendancy of a single strongman, who pacified the others. In stories told in other localities, neighbouring neak ta are more collegial and form a loose confederation. These spirits would keep to themselves until the full moon when they would visit each other. On those nights one can see lights moving through the sky, converging at one place. A few hours later, they fly back the way they came. These are the neak ta, visiting each other. Nevertheless, the neak ta generally is associated with a narrow sphere of sociality and a prickly temperament. Notoriously sensitive



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to slight, these spirits will retaliate against those disturbing their place of rest by causing headaches or sleeplessness. Unity of a more transcendent kind was brought by Buddhism. The local divisions and fear of outsiders that characterised life for Khmers in the past were overcome only with the propagation of this religion. Monks in Wat Kompong Ksan in Tra Vinh town told me that Buddhism came to the Mekong Delta during the time of the Buddha. His 60 best disciples—those who had mastered the greatest number of precepts—went forth to spread his teachings: They were called Arahat. They split up into pairs, each of which travelled to all the countries where Buddhism is found today. Two ended up in the Mekong delta. They were named Uthārathēra and Suvanathēra. At that time, the people still followed the Brahman religion. They believed in protector spirits and demons. When the two Arahat appeared they were a strange sight—with shaved heads and orange robes. The people were afraid and tried to chase them away. But gradually as they heard the teachings of Buddha, of the law of karma, that good comes from good acts, that wellbeing is the result of one’s own actions and not those of external forces (to convince the people they used the example of reaping that which you sow) the people were persuaded and they abandoned their gods and lived according to the teachings of Buddha.

This story provides insights into the importance of Buddhism as an integrating agent for the Khmer people of this region. Unlike the neak ta, who give expression to local sentiments, or the court, whose influence in this region is weak and contested, Buddhism provides a common reference point for all its Khmer residents. This integrating function is evident in the role of the Buddhist wat as the key arena for effecting all life-cycle transitions for Khmer people from birth to death. These rites exhibit considerable gender complementarity and range from the initiation of boys in ordination ceremonies to the meditation rites that help mature-age women manage tensions arising from familial disintegration. It is also evident in the centrality of the local wat as a site for proximate neighbourhood clusters to collaborate in resource sharing and the ritual negotiation of seasonal transitions. Each neighbourhood cluster is conceptualised as a wen, or congregational sub-group, with its own

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lay head, me wen, who serves as a conduit between the neighbourhood and the wider temple community and co-ordinates that group’s participation in rites and merit-making activities centred on the wat. At a spatially more extensive level, wats are key nodes in a subregional social network to which all Khmer settlements north of the Bassac River belong. Some 150 wats spanning two provinces in this region are interlinked in a sophisticated monastic education network that requires student monks to travel from temple to temple over the course of many years in order to complete the full curriculum. During this time, students undertake classes in religious, practical and Khmer cultural literacy subjects offered at different grades and levels by different wats throughout the region. Just as importantly, in pursuit of these educational objectives, they travel and mingle with others from their sub-region in an intense and sustained manner. Building trust and generating prestige, these journeys through the monastic archipelago enable participants to exchange stories about their own families and localities, facilitating the emergence of a region-wide identity and historical consciousness. As the next section demonstrates, this sense of historical identity features practices that conflict with canonical Buddhism as conventionally conceived.

Forests of Defence The phno are typically densely wooded. The heavy tree cover provides shade and attracts birds, making for a cool and pleasant living environment. The permanent supply of fresh groundwater in the dunes means that trees grow well in such localities, since their roots tap into a plentiful source of water. The elevation of the dunes also ensures that the trunks are never submerged. For this reason, trees of great antiquity often are found on the phno. The crowns of great hardwood trees such as the koki and cheu teal tower more than 20 metres above the crest of the dunes. Such trees struggle to establish themselves in the seasonally inundated saline depressions between the phno or along the banks of the brackish rivers. Most of the contemporary tree cover on the phno has been cultivated. Fruit orchards, vegetable patches and stands of timber trees and bamboo are grown on the phno for local consumption and for sale. The great variety of trees and shrubs grown in the sandy soil of the dunes is used for house construction, boat building, furniture making, fencing, medicine and firewood.



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The forests that cover the phno are tied up in accounts of the settlement and defence of the coastal zone. Many Khmer settlements in this region were founded in a forested area. Originally, this entire region is thought to have been wild and too dangerous for human settlement. The story associated with Wat Sańghamangala, one of the oldest in the region, accords Buddhism a central role in rending the area safe for human life. This temple in Vung Liem stands upon a long sand dune that also supports a section of the highway between Vinh Long and Tra Vinh. The Khmer name for this settlement is Kompong Rhol Lien. As the abbot explained: Kompong Rhol Lien means Way to the Waterside Landing. The settlement got its name because, in the past, there was a large pond here from which people came to take water when their wells and ponds dried up during the dry season. It was a natural pond, existing long ago, even before people lived here, when this area was heavily forested. Wild animals used to come to drink from the pond and, over time, the route they took to the pond became a path, a passage through the jungle. When people settled here, they used the same path to take water from the pond and gradually it widened into a track after which the settlement got its name. In the past, the jungle was full of fierce and dangerous animals that would eat human flesh. Once monks came to settle here and the sangha was established, all the wild animals became gentle and no longer harmed the people. This is how the temple got is name. The Pali term Sańghamangala means Happiness of the Sangha.

Typical of phno in this region, Kompong Rhol Lien was favourable for settlement, with a pathway leading to a pristine water source. The phno was rendered habitable by Buddhism, which pacified the wild animals that abounded in its forests. Founding monks were immune from harm by wild animals, according to monks in Wat Pratek Sila Nikrot, another temple built in a once uninhabited forested area. The monks who founded their own temple were not frightened of being eaten by forest animals, because they observed the precepts, above all else that one should not kill. Even wild animals recognise that the person meditating is like Buddha and to kill him is a sin. Another reason that the original monks here were not scared is that they knew sutras to protect themselves. The Pali sutras contain passages that if you know

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them will prevent wild animals from harming you. There are also sutras that can be used to protect you from being harmed or killed during war. Sojourns in the forest have provided Khmers of this region with a near-inexhaustible source of power and inspiration. The foundational Khmer culture hero—a figure capable of tapping the power of the forest—is the ta eisey, or hermit. Surviving dangerous ordeals in the mountains, these hermits were fed by invisible higher beings, who recognised their virtue and taught them magical powers. Ta eisey were endowed with a formidable set of powers, including indestructibility, conjuring whatever they wished, travelling to far-off lands or underground, and omniscient powers of sight and hearing. They were deployed by the Khmer king to confer invulnerability upon the soldiers of the Khmer empire through the application of tattoos, baths in holy water and sacred thread. Although ta eisey are said to be a Brahmanic tradition that long has been superseded by Buddhism, monks are keen to talk about them and they are widely commemorated in statues in the temples of this region.15  A number of recently deceased monks in this region are credited with having been ta eisey. I have met several of their disciples, who claim to possess powerful fighting magic, which they keep prudently hidden. Senior abbots described this as magic that protects, kapia, adding cryptically that Khmer culture remains strong in this region in part because there are some individuals alive today who possess the strength of several men. During the late eighteenth century, the forests were used by representatives of the Khmer court as a military redoubt and cover from which to stage ambushes on Vietnamese royal troops. A passage in a Vietnamese administrative report provides a graphic description of the role played by forests in such conflicts: Trà Vang [Vinh] River—Formerly the area was Cambodian land. In 1780, the Emperor [Nguyê˜n Ánh] needed to commandeer ´ c-nhasome materials for military use. Trà Vinh tribal leader Ô Suô´t objected to the imperial order …. The rebels hid in thick forests, using crossbows to shoot at imperial troops, and buffaloes in their ambush to attack our off-guard units …. In the fourth month, Viscount-General Phu,o,ng with crack troops, used big cannons to shoot at the forests and clear the trees before laying siege to their camps …. Having lost their formidable cover, they were captured by our troops ….16 



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The forest features in tales told about the nineteenth-century Khmer governor of this region Chao Vay Son Kui, who is revered for sacrificing his life in order to defend Khmer culture. The governor ruled at a time when the Vietnamese court was attempting to compel the Khmers to modify their clothes, eating habits and religion in conformity with Vietnamese customs. According to local oral histories, the governor fought the Vietnamese troops using magic similar to that used by forest dwelling hermits. He conjured thousands of ghost soldiers from a handful of sand to attack the enemy and he was skilled in the use of incantations and amulets so that bullets could not penetrate his body. When the area was occupied by troops he retreated to the forest where he eluded capture. Unable to repel the troops, Son Kui instead negotiated an agreement by which he would give himself up in return for an undertaking by the Vietnamese court to stop attempting to assimilate the Khmers. The agreement made, the governor voluntarily surrendered and was executed. Before he died, however, Son Kui took a cheu teal tree and planted it upside down in the ground, declaring that as long as this tree grew, Khmer culture in Vietnam would survive. Despite several reported attempts to cut it down, the now-massive tree survives to this day. Its thick branches, which fan outwards like an umbrella, are tangled and gnarled and they indeed look like roots (Plate 1.6). Most Khmer people in this region know the legend of this magical historical tree and of its importance in ensuring the continued existence of Kampuchea Krom. Today the population has grown and the forests have shrunk. The sole vestiges of the forests of old are the trees contained within the walls of the temples that, monks explain, provide a quiet and cool sanctuary for learning. Children, young monks, girls and boys crowd the temples for Khmer cultural literacy classes which are taught by monks and educated male and female laypersons. Senior monks comment that it is education that has kept the Khmer of this region strong. Military prowess made the Khmer empire great, but a lack of focus on education is what made it fall. Fighting and magic were all that Khmers in the past had to protect themselves; today Khmer literacy constitutes the first line of defence. The most frequently cited reason given by local monks for ordaining is to learn their culture, to learn who they are. Nearly every temple offers Khmer-language classes at the elementary and secondary school level. The focus of the monastic curriculum is

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Plate 1.6 The cheu teal tree planted by Governor Son Kui

on transmitting Khmer language, customs, culture and history to subsequent generations. This monastic emphasis on education as a means to maintain Khmer cultural identity is charged with a sense of urgency. In a wider societal context, which is perceived to be hostile or indifferent to the survival of the Khmers, monasteries alone are deemed able to ensure Khmer cultural survival. Students gain no practical benefit from learning Khmer and teachers receive no salary; each says that they take part in these classes in order to keep Khmer culture alive. The ethic of sacrifice that pervades this monastic educational project is informed by consciousness of the sacrifices made by Son Kui and other members of previous generations in the defence of Khmer cultural identity.

Incorporation and Blowback In the postcolonial period, these monastic-centred vernacular linkages came under attack by Vietnamese national leaders. In the late 1950s, the Republic of Vietnam attempted to draw Khmers away from



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Cambodia-centric identifications and into a Vietnamese national orbit. The measures included conferring Vietnamese citizenship upon the Khmers, closing down Khmer-language schools set up during the French period, requiring children to study Vietnamese in state schools, and compelling Khmer youths to undertake military service. These efforts were only marginally successful, provoking a retreat by Khmers into their monasteries, where they ordained to evade military service and continued studying the French-era Khmer-language curriculum. Many relocated to Cambodia to study, teach and work. Numerous protests against Vietnamese state assimilation were staged during this period, led by senior monks who were supported actively by Vietnam’s communist party. In the 1960s, Khmer residents were subjected to heavy shelling and troop sweeps directed against the insurgency that had taken root in their coastal region. Khmers were caught up on all sides of this conflict, as combatants, as neutrals, and as victims. After 1975, the socialist government dealt more blows to the monastic system. Despite having incited Khmer monks to protest in order to undermine the legitimacy of the former regime, the revolutionary government labelled the monastic vocation parasitic and the religion false and life-negating. Monks were encouraged to desist from the alms round and grow their own rice. They were forced, in contravention of their vows, to perform manual work digging irrigation canals. In the late 1970s, thousands of Khmer monks from this region were conscripted to dig the Third of February Revolution Canal (Kinh Ba Thang Hai), the first canal to penetrate the Tra Vinh Peninsula, along with many smaller canals throughout the then-named Cuu Long Province. In the face of official condemnation, ordinations and the alms round continued unabated. Monasteries continued teaching a parallel full school curriculum in Khmer, despite bans, surveillance and punishment. This was done discretely but with great determination under cover provided by communist-aligned senior monks. In the mid-1980s, the autonomous monastic education system was crushed, with the arrest and killing of senior abbots, the destruction of Khmer-language texts, the terrorisation of teachers and students, the flight of blacklisted teachers and achars abroad, and the complete closure of Khmer-language schools. The monastic schools reopened only in the early 1990s. These measures attacked Khmer people’s most esteemed institutions, cultural identifications and community

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authorities. They are seen to have been motivated by the desire to stifle the emergence of an enlightened and self-confident Khmer intelligentsia and involved the exercise of morally unrestrained power. This campaign generated intense mistrust and fear towards the Vietnamese government that is potent and flourishing to this day. Like elsewhere in the Mekong Delta, agricultural collectivisation in the late 1970s, followed by decollectivisation a few years later, is regarded by Khmers of this coastal region as a two-step process of appropriating land from the Khmers and reallocating it to the Vietnamese.17  Khmers in many localities recall that prior to 1975, the majority of Vietnamese in their communities were landless itinerant traders and workers. Collectivisation took farm land that in most cases was Khmer-owned and redistributed it to these itinerant people. When private use rights were restored, much of this land is reported to have remained in Vietnamese hands, the original Khmer owners receiving little or none of their land back. Market-oriented agriculture has led to further impoverishment and uprooting of Khmers. Khmer farmers have found it difficult to avoid indebtedness in the high-cost commercialised agrarian economy and many have sold all their land to pay for the debts incurred.18  Conversion of much of this region to an engineered freshwater regime by the 1980s permitted the introduction of new shortstemmed, high-yield rice varieties, generically referred to as srau sraal (light rice) and a switch to double cropping. Since the 1990s, the intensification of rice production, along with the liberalisation of agriculture and development of roads and markets has resulted in increased productivity, trade and immigration. However, many Khmer farmers with whom I have spoken lament these developments as undermining a once autonomous and viable way of life. Canals are thought to have allowed saline water to contaminate once pristine fields and are blamed for causing the level of water in ponds to drop. The pesticide required by the new rice crops has entered drinking water supplies, tainted vegetables, and killed many aquatic species that Khmers traditionally have relied upon as a source of protein. The fertilisers, chemicals, agricultural machines and hired labour required to produce the new rice varieties are expensive, making it almost impossible for Khmers who use them to avoid taking a loss. Immigration and the aggressive promotion of Vietnamese schooling have undermined the prestige and centrality of the Khmer language



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as a lingua franca of this region. By the mid-2000s, these processes in concert were leading many Khmer youths to abandon their ricefields and villages to seek work in the city. Founded on miscomprehensions about the Khmer relationship to the local environment, these efforts to incorporate this Khmer locality into the Vietnamese nation state have undercut the security and viability of the Khmer presence in the coastal dune belt and struck a blow at Khmer pride and self-confidence. However, it also can be said that these integration policies blew up in the faces of their instigators, for they sharpened and magnified Khmer perceptions of their predicament that already were implicit or present in diffuse form. Many Khmers in this region emphasise their near-total exclusion from modern political and economic life. They often speak of the moral, cultural and religious rootlessness of the Vietnamese, saying that Khmers have managed to maintain their integrity solely through adherence to their temples. Perceptions of a natural environment that has been contaminated by salt and pesticides owing to the interference of state engineers reprise pre-existing notions of the water surrounding the phno settlements as dangerous, uncontrollable and beyond the Khmer cultural sphere. These developments also have stimulated millenarian thinking among many Khmers in this region. Many find in multiple signs of human and environmental decline evidence that a world-destroying apocalypse ( pleung ka) is rapidly approaching. These signs include falling water tables, a warming climate, increased incidence of food poisoning, the deterioration in trust and honesty, and the exodus of Khmer from their villages and culture. Such ways of interpreting environmental change imply that monastic institutions retain a strong hold in these communities, for Buddhism alone provides the means for salvation in such times. By accumulating meritorious deeds, one has the chance of reincarnating into the exclusive ranks of the higher beings who will escape permanent annihilation at the end of the world.

The Quality of Engagement The district of T’khau, or Tra Cu offers insights into the paradoxical identity of this region as a place that both stands apart but also is central to the modern history of the Khmers of the lower Mekong.

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Set amidst the salt marshes of the coastal fringe T’khau is seen as one of the most remote and impoverished districts in the Mekong Delta and one of the least responsive to state development initiatives. A remarkable feature of this district is its array of long, densely populated and forested phno. Khmer settlements cluster tightly in neat and parallel ranks, resembling an army resting in barracks, with its back up against the sea. The district was a stronghold of Khmer resistance to Vietnamese rule in the early nineteenth century, the home of Chao Vay Son Kui, venerated for sacrificing his life in defence of Khmer culture. It was again the spearhead of major Khmer Krom cultural resistance struggles against the South Vietnamese Republic in the 1960s and against the Communists in the 1970s and 1980s. Redoubtable abbots from this district sacrificed their lives in the struggle to continue teaching Khmer in the mid1980s. Late in that decade, temples in this district were the first to defy the official bans on monastic education by reopening Khmerlanguage schools. Today, T’khau has among the highest ordination levels in Kampuchea Krom. Its some 44 wats continue to attract large numbers of male and female students undertaking studies to the highest level in the monastic education programme. The reasons for studying given by its many female lay students are identical to those given by monks for ordaining: to keep alive Khmer culture in deference to parents, teachers and martyred Khmer heroes. Khmers of this district are acutely aware of the local Khmer tradition of sacrificial resistance; they are highly conscious of the profanity and danger of the Vietnamese-dominated world outside the monasteries; and more than any other Khmers they structure their monastic life almost exclusively around the defence and transmission of their threatened cultural tradition. However, this coastal district also has a venerable tradition of fertile engagements with the wider world, a tradition which is submerged in histories that emphasise autarchy, resistance and cultural preservation. Many of the phno in this district sweep directly into the Bassac River, each with a walking track or road that often terminates in a riverside landing (Plate 1.7). Directly across the Bassac lies Baixau, a major port of call on eighteenth-century regional trading routes. Site of one of the oldest recorded settlements in the eastern delta, T’khau is believed to have been an eastern node of the maritime kingdom of Funan. The foundations of a temple or fortification



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Plate 1.7 Terminus of a dune road on the Bassac River, T’khau District

thought to have been built around 2,000 years ago stand on a dune just back from the big river.19  The archaeologist Louis Malleret discovered in the vicinity many pre-Angkorian Buddhist statues of remarkably fine and naturalistic form, which led him to suggest that this was one of the earliest and most active Buddhist centres in the lower Mekong region (Malleret 1943: 16–20). Since at least the French colonial period, this maritime district has attracted migrants from southern China, who settled in Khmer villages, engaged in trade, intermarried, learned Khmer and participated in religious life. Many people who today proudly identify as Khmers trace connection to at least one Chinese ancestor, attesting to the attractiveness of Khmer cultural identifications to members of the southern Chinese diaspora. A great number of the lavish temple reconstructions in this district have been financed by a wealthy Sino-Khmer man originating from this region, whom many locals consider to be of Khmer ethnicity. People of mixed Chinese-Khmer ancestry are also prominent in local monastic life as abbots, teachers

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and students. The active involvement of people of part Chinese ancestry in local sociality in this district, and the recognition they seek, and gain, as Khmers is a phenomenon that is not unique to this region. It also can be seen in other coastal areas of the Mekong Delta, where live many descendants of Chinese migrants who settled among and intermarried with Khmer people. Khmers from this locality also have made major contributions to life outside this region. They include an impressive list of Cambodian nationalists, intellectuals, politicians, monks and artists. Settlements on both sides of the Bassac are attributed with the creation of Lakorn Bassac, a musical theatre genre popular in Cambodia that dramatises Buddhist themes. Talented young people have long made the pilgrimage to study in Cambodia, where they are counted among that country’s most disciplined and motivated students. Until 1975, when these itineraries were forbidden, most graduates would return home, repatriating the latest knowledge. Since the mid-2000s, circumventing official bans on study in Cambodia, the district has sent many of its best students to Thailand, and they have begun to return home to teach in monastic schools. Khmers from this locality are highly active in overseas Khmer Krom advocacy organisations. Others have made their mark in Vietnamese institutions as revolutionaries, teachers, and administrators from local to national levels. Monks from this district are in the forefront of the movement to reconstruct Khmer temples and introduce Khmer literacy classes in provinces throughout southern Vietnam that were badly affected during the wars. These dynamics have led some locals to reconceptualise their region as a place whose integrity is sustained not only by insularity and careful separation from cultural others, but also through intercultural exchanges. A senior Khmer communist party member from T’khau explained the extraordinary political influence of people from his province in these terms: People from Preah Trapeang fill the government departments in Cambodia at all levels. We are strong, do as we say, speak directly, act correctly. The level of study is very high, compared with Cambodia. All the high level government officials in Vietnam are from Kampuchea Krom for the same reason. Vo Van Kiet, Phan Van Khai, Nguyen Tan Dung [Vietnam’s present and past prime ministers]. They are people of Kampuchea Krom.



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I asked him why this was the case. Preah Trapeang is at the mouth of the Mekong. It is said that here, the water flows both ways. Water flows from Cambodia to the sea through here, and through here from the sea to Cambodia.

As a gateway between the sea and the interior, this region has been admitting influences and giving birth to empires and nations for millennia: Long ago in the past, this land was called Suvannaphum. It lay between China, India and the ocean. The original people of Suvannaphum were Khmer-Mon from India. They came to this land by sea. Their temple architecture, the practice of venerating neak ta at the edge of the village, and Pali, the language in which the Buddhist sutras are written, are identical to ours. At that time, separate countries did not exist. But out of Suvannaphum emerged the Khmer empire and later Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos.

He said the legend behind the Khmer name of the province, Preah Trapeang, meaning “Buddha in the Water” (or sacred pond), offers an insight into the maritime genesis of Kampuchea Krom. The legend is associated with Wat Kompong Salah Reij, in Tra Vinh town. As the name suggests, was it once located on the water’s edge. Here is one version of the tale: In the past, this was a port where ships came and went. At that time, the area belonged to the kingdom of Funan, the earlier name for Kampuchea. People followed the Brahman religion, until the occurrence of a miracle. A statue of Buddha mysteriously floated to the surface of the river. The statue was in a standing position on the water’s surface. Although the current was strong, the statue remained floating in the same place. Locals tried to move it but it was too heavy. It was only when a Buddhist monk came by and tied a length of silk thread to the statue that it could be towed to the bank. A temple was erected to enshrine the statue at that site and people began to follow the Buddhist religion.

The land of Suvannaphum is reconceptualised here not as an archipelago, towering above the sea, but as a thoroughfare at the river’s

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mouth. To this place, came Khmer-Mon culture from India, and Buddhism by water. From this place emerged empires, religions, modern countries and their rulers. The tale situates this downriver region as an origin point for modern Southeast Asia, putting its Khmer residents into a historically central position and offering an explanation for their traditions of engagement.

Conclusion This chapter has grappled with a number of paradoxes that embroil the Khmers who live in the coastal dune belt north of the Bassac River. These Khmers are considered marginal to both Vietnamese and Cambodian national projects but also command great prestige in each. They live in a swampy area of poor soils that is arid and prone to saline-infestation, yet they long have enjoyed material security and possess a vibrant cultural and religious life. They are considered poor and backward, but also highly educated, culturally influential and politically powerful. They can be seen as a stereotypically insular and bounded people, yet their way of life is also integrated and engaged. In an attempt to untangle these paradoxes I have examined a key landscape feature in this littoral environment, the ancient coastal dune or phno. A place simultaneously of residence, material sustenance, work, religious activity and defence, the phno also is a site of intense cultural elaboration. Elaborate cosmological schemas are woven around these all-purpose landforms, which charge their every aspect with universal cosmic significance. At the same time this process of cosmological embellishment subtly remoulds the universal schemas into scenarios that reflect the peculiarities of local ecology, social structure and history. These landforms, which provide much nourishment for imaginative and spiritual self-definition, also sustain the Khmers materially. They enable a degree of self-sufficiency while also providing means for engaging and exchanging with the wider world. They are bases for resistance to modern state incorporation but also sites for influencing the course of that incorporation and redefining its meaning. The accomplishments of the Khmers of this region are many. They situate themselves within an expansive, religiously defined transoceanic archipelago, while insisting on the existence of minute but cosmically significant differences in altitude that critically separate them from their nearest neighbours, the Vietnamese. In a saline



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desert, beyond the reach of the Mekong’s nourishing floods, they have fashioned a way of life they consider to be self-sufficient and materially and morally secure. In Buddhism, they have found a moral resource for overcoming postulated primordial conditions of isolation, ignorance and enmity and the historical inadequacies of court rule. Yet they reach into an imagined pre-Buddhist tradition and local memories of sacrifice for resources with which to counter modern threats. They exemplify a decentred model of Khmer cultural sovereignty whose potency and influence over Vietnamese and Khmers alike is so great that it leads one to question whether Khmer authority in the Mekong Delta has ever been significantly eroded. Modern state attempts to restructure their life have met with little success and indeed have only strengthened and sharpened the cosmological framework the state has sought to dismantle. However, their accomplishments go further than survival, maintenance and resistance. They have forged a way of being Khmer that has immense influence in the Khmer and Vietnamese worlds. In their practical re-enactments of the myth of Suvannaphum, they embody a model for comprehending the nature of rural sociality in the Mekong Delta and the environmental and cultural transformation of the wider Mekong region. Through the prism of this myth, their distinctive littoral civilisation beckons appealingly as a source, centre and standard for their fellow Khmers and indeed for all the modern civilisations of their region.

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2 Coastal River-Dune Complex: A Narrative Confederation The coastal dune belt extends south of the Bassac River into the present-day provinces of Soc Trang [Khleang] and Bac Lieu [Plieu]. Discussion of this region so far has focused on its northern half, centred in Preah Trapeang, or Tra Vinh. However, the Khmer-populated coastal area south of the Bassac possesses unique characteristics that merit treating it as separate region (see Map 1). The southern half of the coastal dune belt shares with the north a surface water regime of alternating freshwater/saltwater incursions. As in the north, groundwater is too salty to drink. Here again, Khmers reside in great numbers along phno, the ancient coastal dunes that run parallel to the shoreline. The phno are elevated platforms for settlement in an inundated region. As natural reservoirs of fresh water, they are tapped by wells and communal ponds that sustain human life and allow horticulture to be practised in a maritime setting. These elongated sand ridges also serve as inter-settlement communications routes.1  As in the north, the dune belt is encompassed by major waterways, interlaced by internal water routes, and linked into oceanic trade routes. There are, however, some telling differences. Rainfall in the southern half of the coastal dune belt is higher than in the north and the rainy season lasts up to a month longer.2  On the other hand, there are fewer phno in the south, and they are on average lower than those in the north. The low elevation impedes their functions as dry residential platforms and as natural reservoirs of subsurface fresh water. Yet they retain enough water to make residence possible, 68



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and the difference they make is critical, given the pronounced salty water conditions of the southern part of this region. The dune belt in the south runs close to the sea. The most westerly phno is just 40 kilometres from the coastline.3  The phno in the south are spaced more widely apart than those in the north. The depressions between the ridges are much broader and a greater proportion of land in the region is covered seasonally by brackish water and by permanent salt marshes.4  Finally, the tidal rivers that snake between the phno are longer and wider than those in the north. They open the region to the sea and, during the dry season, serve as an efficient conduit for saline water to infiltrate the entire region. Another characteristic of this maritime region is its apparent ecological incoherence. One set of Khmer villages clusters along the present-day shoreline. The lives, ritual practices and mythic consciousness of these villagers are intricately bound up with the sea. Another set lies along dunes in the interior separated from the shore by a vast salt marsh. Residents here consider the sea both dangerous and, fortunately, far away from where they live and work. Complicating matters further, most Khmer villages in this region are not on phno at all. Instead they are found along the region’s seasonally saline rivers, dispersed from the headwaters of these rivers to their mouths. The lives of the Khmers of these scattered and ecologically distinct localities differ so markedly that one might wonder if they have anything in common at all. Perhaps the most striking feature of this Khmer-settled region is its outgoing character. The southern coastal complex is economically the most dynamic region of Kampuchea Krom. The Khmers of this region are renowned for the production of surpluses for commercial sale, and for their entrepreneurial capacities. A good number of the large thriving enterprises lining the roads and rivers are owned by people who identify as Khmer. Khmers of this region are renowned among their peers as enterprising travellers and migratory labourers who frequently are to be found in other regions working as agricultural labourers and skilled artisans. Theirs is also a strikingly cosmopolitan region where people of different ethnicities and languages mingle with comparative goodwill. Khmer locals proudly contrast their openness, customary hospitality to strangers and facility in three languages to the more monocultural, closed ethos prevailing in Cambodia and in the Khmer-settled areas north of the Bassac River.

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Considered together these characteristics raise a number of puzzling questions. Living among the mud flats and salt marshes of the delta’s fringe, Khmers have not only managed to survive but have founded one of the most outwardly engaged and dynamic culture areas in the Khmer-speaking world. What has enabled them to prosper in such a harsh region? What factors account for the apparent self-confidence they bring to their engagements with external processes and cultures? The region in which they live is characterised by pronounced ecological incoherence and diffusion, and by historically intense incursions of exogenous processes, cultures and peoples. How in such a context have they managed to develop a common identity as Khmers and avoid cultural fragmentation, dispersal and assimilation? This chapter investigates the lives and identities of the Khmers in the southern half of the coastal complex, asking what unites them and distinguishes them from Khmers in other regions. It describes the connections and institutions that integrate Khmers of ecologically dispersed and diverse settlements and discusses an original genre of regional consciousness through which they conceptualise their relationship to each other. It also discusses recent attempts to integrate this region within the modern nation state and the paradoxically disintegrative effects brought about by these development efforts. Through an exploration of Khmer stories and rites, it shows how Khmers of this region have assimilated recent economic, environmental and cultural changes into their own worldview. The chapter offers insights into the constitution of an outgoing and resilient Khmer identity in a regional context of ecological dispersion and historical disjuncture.

Ecological Difference and Dispersion The coastal complex south of the Bassac River can be sub-divided into three ecologically distinct zones.

Coastal Dune Fringe Approximately 25, or one quarter, of the Khmer wat-based villages in this region are distributed along a 50-kilometre strip of coastline between Bac Lieu [Plieu] City and Lich Hoi Thuong commune of



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Soc Trang. Most are on an isthmus pressed between the ocean and the Peam Chan, a long estuary that runs parallel to the coast. At the end of this isthmus lies Chrui Nhua District [Vinh Chau]. The term Chrui Nhua means beach mulberry isthmus.5  The district is home to 21 Khmer villages, each centred on a temple, the largest made up of 3,000 families. Many are war refugees who found the isthmus to be a safe haven during ancient and modern wars.6  Until the mid1980s the district was accessible to the mainland only by boat. It was further separated from the mainland by a broad salt marsh some 15 kilometres wide. Houses and temples on the isthmus lie along a set of phno that are oriented parallel to the sea. Locals say there are three such sand ridges, spaced closely together. The phno nearest the sea is the highest and contains within it a reserve of fresh groundwater, tapped by shallow ponds that mysteriously never run salty. Until the 1980s, during the dry season, residents of the coastal fringe would walk to the ponds each day armed with buckets and fetch home fresh water for their household needs. During the rainy season, rice traditionally was grown in the inter-ridge areas, once salts had been flushed away. However, the rice crop in the coastal fringe has never been impressive, even after new canals and sluice gates were installed in the early 1980s. Paradoxically, coastal horticulture has been more successful. Vegetables and fruit trees are cultivated intensively on the coastal phno, however they are irrigated from the deep aquifer that was first tapped early in the twentieth century. Although the prevalence of salt water sets tight constraints on human residence, it also provides the main resources for local livelihoods. For residents of the Khmer settlements of the coastal fringe, the sea has long been the most important source of subsistence. The river estuaries, coastal flats and salt marshes are rich in many species of aquatic plants and animals, which are gathered for consumption and processing. At low tide, residents comb the mudflats and sea shallows for clams, mussels, sea snails, crabs and shrimp. Elderly residents of Bac Lieu recall that when they were children in the 1950s, a few minutes spent with a cast net at the waterside would yield plenty of fish for their family’s daily needs. Khmers in Long Phu District continue a local tradition of coastal fishing, using small boats moored in the river estuaries (Plate 2.1). Chrui Nhua District is a traditional centre of rush mat production. As far back as the 1930s,

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saltpans lined the coastal flats that yielded salt in the dry season. Today, the entire coastal fringe is given over to tiger shrimp aquaculture. Khmer residents of Chrui Nhua and Plieu raise brackish water shrimp for export in huge specially dug ponds that crater the coastal landscape. The sea features in the mythology and religious life of these coastal dwellers. A common set of stories concerns a creature called the neang chan fish (treil neang chan), also known as a dugong or dolphin (treil psaot). Locals described its appearance: “It looks like a girl, with a human head but without hair, and with human ears, eyes and nose, and even sexual organs like a girl’s. Only the legs are like a fish’s tail. It spouts water from a hole atop its head.” I was assured that these half-women, half-fish, are alive in the sea off Plieu. Ocean-goers occasionally see them. They have an inclination to save sailors in distress. A fisherman told of an encounter his friend, a boat captain, had with one of them: “Twenty years ago, Mr Tu’s boat sank in the ocean, with those on the boat facing peril. A dugong appeared and lifted the boat up, preventing it from sinking.” Sometimes they interact with sailors. However, a sailor who falls for the womanly charms of one of these creatures literally will come to a rotten end. Elderly men from Chrui Nhua told me that once, a treil psaot jumped into the boat of a fisherman at sea. She was so beautiful that the fisherman made love to her. But some time later, as a result, his penis rotted and died. Locals enshrine the remains of these creatures to ensure safety at sea. A Khmer monk explained: When one of these fish dies in the ocean, the sea turns rough, and there is a cyclone lasting seven nights. That is why whenever fishermen find a dead neang chan fish in the open sea, they bring it ashore and bury it inland. At present there is a fish burial site in Vinh Chau village.

At the tip of the isthmus is an imposing grave made of laterite stone blocks. Residents of the coastal strip visit it to pray for assistance with their lives. Locals contend that a royal personage must be entombed there, since stones of this kind are found only in Angkor. Her name is Neang Chan. Most people believe she is a Khmer queen who jumped into the river and drowned. They say that her body floated in the open ocean for seven days before it was recovered and enshrined at the mouth of the river estuary. She still protects the



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Plate 2.1 Coastal fishing vessel, Long Phu

people who live on the isthmus and helps them with their livelihoods. Parallels with the story of the identically named neang chan fish are striking, for in one version Neang Chan is a drowned queen, and in another she is a species of woman-like fish that still lives in the sea along this coast. The tension between these accounts is revealing, as we shall see subsequently. Also distinctive to this coastal strip is the strong cultural influence of migrants originating from the southern coast of China. The dunes along the coast are dotted with small shrines to the southern Chinese goddess Tien Hou, lavishly decorated with images of ocean-going sailboats, and with lobsters, crabs, fish and other products of the sea upon which the local economy depends. The southern Chinese influence is discernable in a distinctive kind of house with two gabled roofs, and neatly tended vegetable gardens. Most strikingly, Teochiu serves as the local lingua franca. Most people I met in this region who identified as Khmers were able to speak some Teochiu, and tend to use it in their dealings with nonKhmer people. In turn, most people whose ancestors originate from

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southern China speak Khmer fluently. Ethnic Viets are also present, although in the minority, but today everyone knows at least some Vietnamese. People who live in this coastal strip are renowned for being able to speak three languages: Vietnamese, Khmer and Teochiu.

Inland Dune Belt A second concentration of some 20 Khmer settlements is found inland, strung along a set of 5 parallel dunes that are spaced between 20 to 40 kilometres from the sea, in and around Khleang (Soc Trang City). They are considered by their residents to be the oldest Khmer settlements in the southern coastal complex. The oldest, Wat Prasat Gong, reportedly was founded in 1227. Eight other wats in this vicinity are believed to have been founded before 1600. Conditions in this inland area are more favourable to growing rice, since it experiences an appreciable annual flood surge, and the length and intensity of saline incursions are less. In the pre-war era, when the rains flushed out brackish water from the inter-ridge depressions, Khmer people sowed varieties of rainfed rice with a six- or sevenmonth growing season. To this day, these flatlands are too salty to permit a dry-season crop. The phno of the interior are more heavily wooded than those on the coastal fringe. Some fruit trees are grown, but the yield is poor, and not all phno in the interior will sustain fruit trees. In what essentially has been a rice monoculture and rice exporting area since French colonial times, local livelihoods in the interior dune settlements have been supplemented by woodworking, ceramics and bamboo basket ware manufacture: activities that utilised the resources of the phno. Residents of these inland dune settlements talk about their locality as a blessed land, immune to storms and other natural disasters. They point out that storms and floods regularly devastate regions to the north, the south and the west, but leave the Khleang area unscathed. Some say their settlements are naturally protected from storms owing to the height of the phno on which they stand. Being the first land to emerge from the sea millennia ago, and hence the highest land in their region, the settlements are too high to be affected by storms blown up from the sea below. Others suggest that a powerful locality spirit or neak ta protects their region and still others contend that the concentration of Buddhist temples in their



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locality demonstrate the merit accrued by its residents which causes damaging storms to swerve to avoid harming them. The sacred si ma perimeter stones interred beneath worship halls are so infused with Pali sutras chanted by monks over the course of generations, residents assert, that water cannot seep in from below, nor can the settlements be brought down by earthquakes. The entire Khleang region (present-day Soc Trang province) benefits from this mystical protection but the residents of these inland settlements are most eloquent in adducing reasons for why this is so. An additional ring of protection is provided by ancient walls that surround the inland dune settlements. In the most restrictive telling, the long and populous dune known as Phno Totung is girded to its north and its south by a pair of high earthen barricades that prevent infiltration by water and enemies. A pair of long, parallel phno are said to protect the ancient centre of Khleang itself. Intriguingly, Khleang means storehouse, a place where grain or weapons were stored in the past for safety. Residents of this centre consider themselves to be protected by this inner pair of natural walls, which in turn are flanked by an outer pair of barricades that encase 5 major phno and 20 important temples. Owing to the protection provided by these nested sets of walls the Khmer citizens of the inland dune settlements were not attacked by enemies in numerous past wars, nor was their area ever bombed, unlike the Ca Mau Peninsula, or the central delta, whose Khmer communities were devastated by intense wartime fighting. In one version, an outermost wall is found by the sea at Plieu, where a Lao army once encamped. This expansive vision sees the entire southern coastal complex protected from water and enemies by a set of concentric walls. Legends associated with the long inland dune Phno Totung specify that a royal ship sank near here. In some versions the ship foundered because a passenger who was attempting to scoop up water to drink grabbed a handful of dirt instead, and uttered an oath, causing the land to retaliate by sinking the ship. The ship was stocked with precious cargo: a black urn, a bronze gong, a clock or sun dial, a Buddha statue, and a tower with Buddha images on each of its four faces. These items did not go down with the ship but instead floated mysteriously on the water until they came to their respective resting sites at points along this dune. A temple was erected at the site where each of these objects came ashore. The ship itself, they say, is interred within the sands of the dune. Each

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of these items of beached flotsam exhibits magical and sometimes dangerous qualities and they are believed to protect the localities where they are enshrined. This legend, widely known to dune residents, unites all of the settlements along this long dune by reference to a single shipwreck story. The confederating of villages by stories of maritime misadventure is a recurrent and distinctive feature of Khmers in the southern coastal complex, a point to which I will shortly return.

Local Rivers An additional 60 or so Khmer settlements are scattered throughout the southern half of the coastal complex. They lie along small local rivers that drain the water accumulating on the seaboard. In the rainy season, the upper reaches of these rivers run sweet, giving the people who live along their banks better access to fresh water than any other Khmer communities in this region. For up to half a year, however, salt water courses through them, creating a critical water shortage for riverside dwellers. Until the 1980s, people living along the downstream reaches of these rivers faced near-permanent conditions of freshwater scarcity. One solution was to travel upstream by boat to collect water from a place where the river remained fresh, or else buy it from the large water freighters that plied the downstream reaches.7  Another solution adopted by all riverside dwellers was to dig ponds into the clay soil to trap and store rainwater for use through the dry months. The clay walls of the pond minimised contamination of the drinking source by local groundwater, which is salty. The ponds had to be situated several hundred metres away from the river, otherwise salt water in the river channel would percolate through the earth and contaminate the drinking water. The low elevation of the riverside settlements meant they were subject to periodic inundations during the flood season. Upstream settlements were affected far more than those closer to the coast. In the 1950s, the water level in Ta Ang usually reached a height of 50 centimetres at the flood peak in early November.8  According to locals, the floods were caused by wind that pushed the water up from the Bassac River. Storms also caused the water to rise. However, the duration was just two weeks and settlements were overrun only once or twice during that period, at high tides.9  Temple buildings were on stilts, set on a platform of silt excavated from the rivers,



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however, only the richest people had stilt houses. Most people avoided the brief period of flooding by digging a ditch beside their house and using the dirt from the ditch to create a raised platform on which they built their home. Riverside residents were able to grow one crop of rice per year, thanks to the rains and the brief flood surge that fertilised the soil. The rice plants were more than a metre high and had a six- to sevenmonth growing season. The combination of lengthy saline incursions and poor clay soil meant it was not possible to cultivate fruit trees, or year-round vegetable gardens. However, being next to the river ensured residents of these settlements a plentiful year-round supply of fish. The rivers and their backswamps abound in useful plant species, after which many riverside settlements are named. Prek Takuon is named after edible water spinach, which grew abundantly along this river. Prek Umpu Year (Drooping Mangrove Apple River) derives its name from the trees that grew along its banks, their branches declining into the water.10  Prek Sang Ke is named after a tree with highly combustible resin.11  Beng Coc means rush lake. Wat Serey Chum Beng Tonsa translates as “tonsa trees surrounding the lake temple”.12  Several wats are built beside naturally occurring bodhi trees, daem po, whose seeds likely came to the site by river. In the 1950s, most Khmer households along the water’s edge had a rowboat. Motorboats appeared in the 1960s. Today, many Khmers have motorboats, which are garaged by the water’s edge in leaf-covered sheds. The boats are used for fishing, visiting other neighbourhoods, and getting to the market and the temple. Temple names illustrate the longstanding use of rivers as communications conduits. Wat Pem Buon (fourway confluence), Wat Kompong Meancheay Tuk Pray (saltwater landing) and Wat Chong Prek (temple at the end of the river) exemplify this practice.13  Some village names evoke river travel. For instance, Tumposok means “pull the hair”. The associated story is that when people passed by in boats under low-lying trees, their hair got caught in the branches and was pulled. Animals too used the rivers for travel. Peam Sramroich means “ant confluence”. Prek Ondaok derives its name from turtles that once lived in that river. Wat Prek Ping Taung’s striking origin story speaks of a giant golden eel that swam upstream along their local stream. When the eel got to the place where their temple stands it came to rest forever. The temple is named after this mysterious occurrence.

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Khmer river-naming practices reveal a localised geographical consciousness. Rivers rarely are named in their entirety. Each section of a river obtains its name from a local species or occurrence. Usually only locals know the name of their segment of river and the story behind the name. Rarely do the names given to waterways indicate that they are part of a larger system. Prek Ta Ang, Prek Ta Sam and Prek Ta Koi, for instance, are interconnecting tributaries. They derive their names from three brothers who settled along the branches of a local river, chasing away wild animals so people could live there. Locals conceptualise the connection between the tributaries as a kinship relationship between three brothers. When canals were dug during the French and later periods they extended and connected many of these local rivers. In many instances, Khmers moved into position along the banks of these canals, expanding their residential repertoire from natural to artificial waterways. However, the canals continue to be regarded as natural rivers ( prek). Like the rivers, they are seen as conduits that open the land to the sea, allowing salt water to penetrate the interior. The canals also are subject to segmentary naming practices. For instance, an eight-kilometre long stretch of the canal that runs between Soc Trang and Long Phu is given different names by residents of each of the three Khmer settlements along it.14  Similarly, a 15-kilometre stretch of canal between Soc Trang and Phung Hiep is named after three brothers, Ta Men, Ta Can and Ta Quyt, who once owned land along its banks.

Confederated by Water In significant respects, the southern half of the coastal complex is not an especially coherent region. For a start, the phno that form the basis for most Khmer settlements are far apart, broadly dispersed and, unlike those in the northern part of this region, few are connected to each other by land. The riverside settlements also are scattered widely through two provinces. Broad salt marshes and wide brackish estuaries separate coastal and inland Khmer communities from each other. Moreover, the coastal and interior phno bands and the upstream and downstream river settlements each experience strikingly different ecological conditions. Resources in each of these localities were traditionally plentiful, but not diverse enough to meet local subsistence needs.



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Given such conditions, one might expect to find here a set of isolated Khmer localities, each engaged in a struggle for subsistence within the constraints of its own ecological niche. Indeed, the legends told by residents in each of the three main settlement zones in this region appear to support such an interpretation. The legends differ markedly, and are not known to people in other zones, which reinforces the impression that this is a region of culturally disparate and autarchic Khmer localities. However, on the contrary, the Khmers of the southern coastal complex long have been known as the most outward oriented, cosmopolitan and economically dynamic of all Khmer residents in Vietnam. To resolve this paradox, we need to return to a feature that unifies the region. This is a natural river system, whose basin defines the southern part of the coastal complex. The majority of the small rivers in this region belong to this system. With its headwaters some 60 kilometres from the coast, its multiple tributaries wind through the provinces of Khleang and Plieu before converging at Peam Chan (known in Vietnamese as Co Co River) and flowing into the sea at Chrui Nhua. These tributaries run between or alongside every one of the dunes in this region, connecting the phno settlements of the coastal fringe and interior to each other by water. The majority of Khmer riverside settlements in this region also lie along rivers that belong to this system.15  By virtue of this natural interconnecting feature, the broadly dispersed Khmer settlements of the entire southern coastal complex are linked to each other by water. This river system has long had an integrating function as a transport conduit for the Khmer residents of the southern coastal complex. Prior to the digging of drainage and irrigation canals which occurred in sustained bursts around the turn of the twentieth century and again in the early 1980s, the tributaries of this river were broader and flowed more freely. Eighty-year-old residents of Khleang recall travelling between the phno-based settlements of Khleang and Plieu in their youths by boat. In the 1940s, it took 18 hours to paddle or sail from Chrui Nhua, on the coast, to Soc Trang City. In the war years river travel became unsafe. But between the end of armed conflict in 1975 and the upgrading of roads and popularisation of motorbikes in the late 1990s, Khmer people relied heavily on inter-district motorised boat services to get around. Several Khmer riverside dwellers also own cargo boats for transporting their own produce and for trade. This situation markedly differs from the

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northern part of the coastal dune belt which, although surrounded by water, is not internally linked by waterways. Instead, as we have seen, the northern region has a highly developed land-based transport system that follows the high land where the Khmer settlements congregate. This river system also provides the medium along which trade is conducted. To this day, such bulky items as rice, vegetables and construction materials are transported by water. Several important markets are located along the interior river system. One of the biggest and most lively is Bei Chhau (Baixau or My Xuyen), situated on a phno at the junction of two tributaries of the inland river system. Historically, Bei Chhau was a well-known port on Chinese junk routes between Southeast Asia and the southern China coast.16  It is equidistant from the coastal and the interior phno belts, to which it is accessible by water. The inland trading junction connects the various Khmer-inhabited localities in this region to international trade routes. It is a regional exchange centre for products of the dispersed dune settlements. Fish, salt, rush mats and water coconut leaves from the coast are arrayed in the market alongside rice, timber and fruit from upstream settlements (Plate 2.2). It is a centre of boat building, seafood processing and wooden furniture and basket ware production. It is also a transport hub for still-functioning commercial passenger boat services. Bei Chhau was formerly the main market in this region, and ceded its pre-eminence to Soc Trang and Bac Lieu on the same river system only after the development of the overland road route which, it should be recalled, runs along the phno system. Khmer residents of this region have a legend about this river system called Provot Neang Chan. It concerns Neang Chan, wife of a Khmer king. The king loved her more than his other wives for she was an excellent cook. But she had dubious methods, using her fingernails to scoop spices into her dishes. Jealous, the other wives accused her of adopting this method in order to poison the king. Fearing for her life, Neang Chan fled the palace, with the king’s troops in hot pursuit. She fled down to the eastern seaboard by boat, following this river system. At various points during her flight, the king’s troops almost caught up with her, forcing her to abandon camp hastily, and jettison items she had with her. A pot of halfcooked rice, a spittoon, a hairbrush, a tiara and an umbrella were among the objects she discarded along the way. Eventually, arriving



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Plate 2.2 Riverside wholesale market, My Xuyen

at Peam Chan, the mouth of the river that is named after her, she jettisoned herself into the water and drowned. Her body was recovered and a tomb was built at the mouth of the river to commemorate her. Most versions of the story also relate that before she died she consigned ( pneu) different parts of body into a variety of plants and animals that are endemic to the estuarine reaches of this river system. Poree-Maspero postulates that the myth of Neang Chan symbolises the perennial oscillation between wet (humidité ) and dry (secheresse) that is fundamental to Khmer agrarian life in this monsoon region. Neang Chan, who embodies lunar/female/wet season/ flood principles, is pursued downstream by the king, symbolic of the solar/male/dry season/droughts (Poree-Maspero 1964: 368). However, Neang Chan also can be considered a personification of the river itself, whose waters forever are escaping seaward, dissipating into the ocean and nourishing life at its margins. She starts far upstream, in present Cambodia. Her destination is the sea but she does not take the direct route. Instead she diverts into the local river system

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that drains the swampy coastal region south of the Bassac. Hers is a circuitous route that follows the tributaries of this local river to its mouth. Like the river, she travels downstream, giving life to plants and animals, flotsam washing onto the banks. At confluences she is given to indecision; prayers and divination determine her fate. She meets her end where the river meets the sea and a giant whirlpool forms. In some versions, she doesn’t die, but lives on as half-woman, half-fish, out at sea, where fresh water mingles with salt water. The compelling story of Neang Chan traces the contours of the river system that defines the southern half of the coastal complex. Most events in the story take place within its basin. Various localities along this river system derive their names from episodes in the Neang Chan tale. Peam Sen (the confluence of prayers) is where a tributary branches away from the Bassac. There she paused to make an offering and determine what route she should take. At Tumposok (comb the hair), her hair comb fell into the water. Bei Chhau (halfcooked rice) is where she stopped to prepare a meal. When the pursuing king’s troops caught up with her, she had to flee before the rice was fully cooked. Peam Tho (spittoon confluence) is where she jettisoned a spittoon from her boat to lighten the load. Peam Chan, the river estuary, is the place where she met her death. Episodes exist for places along every one of the tributaries that make up this river system. In this way, the Neang Chan tale connects a host of disparate riverine settlements in a shared narrative about the journey of a fugitive Khmer queen. It is a tale of Khmer people and places linked to each other by water. Phno settlements within the southern coastal complex are also woven into the tale. Prasat Gong, the oldest Khmer temple in this region, is said to have been built in the thirteenth century, originally as a resting place for the king when he was pursuing his queen. Other dunes in the vicinity of Soc Trang City are tied to Queen Neang Chan. At Phno Kan Cheu, she left behind a bamboo basket, the kind that farmers use to store rice. Its proper name, Phno Kab Cheu, means “consign a basket”.17  In some tellings, the items of cargo that washed ashore along Phno Totung—the clock, Buddha statues, urn and gong—all came from Neang Chan’s boat when it sank.18  Phno by the coast feature in this story as well. At Wat Tang Du (Umbrella temple) an umbrella from her craft washed ashore. The imposing stone grave where she is entombed is on one of the



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coastal dunes. These episodes connect the residents of distantly scattered phno settlements to each other and to those living in riverside settlements by reference to a common tale of riverine flight. This tale recounts the origins of the principal plants and animal species upon which people of this littoral region depend for their livelihoods. Her breasts became the fruit of the mangrove apple ( pleay umpu), which is shaped like a woman’s breast, smooth, rounded and with a nipple-like protrusion. Her legs, specifically her thighs ( plou), were transformed into the trunks of Nipa palms (daem chak).19  Her toes and her fingers became the tapered root spikes (pneumatophores) of mangrove trees that protrude vertically from mudflats. Her fingernails, a crucial detail in the story of her expulsion from the palace, transformed into a variety of shelled mollusc called neang chan’s nails (kro chot neang chan). Some refer to it as a snail (ktchon), the kind that lives on the roots, trunk and leaves of mangrove trees and climbs and descends with the tide.20  Her face was transformed into a sea crab. In one version her tiara becomes a sea crab’s carapace. Her ears became frogs (kien kua).21  Her eyes turned into phkaa ren, a white flower with a red centre that looks like an eye. Her palm and fingers transformed into a treil kabael, or stingray, common to the coastal waters and brackish estuaries of this region. The markings on the belly of every treil kabael, so I was told, resemble a palm and five outstretched fingers. An important feature of this tale is that few people, if any, know it in its entirety. Typically a person will know the general outline of the story and one or two key episodes, disclaiming knowledge of others. Often such episodes are known only to locals. Along the coastal dunes where corn is grown, it is reported that Neang Chan’s hair turned into corn tufts, her teeth into a row of corn kernels. People living along the rivers say that her hair was transformed into the fine root strands that hang from the branches of the chi tree that proliferates along the rivers of the lower delta.22  The story of her transformation into a mermaid or dugong is known only to those living by the sea in Plieu. By means of this decentred form of narration, place names, occurrences, landforms and species that are specific to the locality with which a given speaker is familiar are brought into the story of the fugitive queen. The story is also rendered dynamic through this means because people can “write” what they know into it.

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At the same time, locals frequently cast doubt upon versions told elsewhere. People living along the Umpu Year tributary say her route followed their branch of the river system, and none other. Those living along the Peam Sen tributary disagree and say she fled past their homes. The inclusion of the inland phno in episodes of the story is controversial. Many residents of these dunes do not know of any connection between their settlements and the Neang Chan tale, while others insist that they are linked. Remarkably, these disputes reinforce the connection between the flight of the queen and the river system. People living along streams just beyond its basin are emphatic that the tale has no relationship to their locality. Invariably, all defer to the ultimate authority of narrators living beside the Peam Chan estuary in Chrui Nhua, the place where all the tributaries of this river system converge. The fragmentary and often contested versions of the story give rise to a belief that the larger story has now been forgotten. After all, people insist that it is a true history that dates back to the time of the Khmer empire. Each telling invariably comes with the proviso that, regrettably, only a small part is still remembered. Some people are reluctant to share what they know since they fear that to recount this history incorrectly amounts to a sin. Only preceding generations were qualified to tell it, for they knew the whole tale. Some suggest this reticence is the result of generations of self-censorship by people frightened to divulge the contents of a politically significant story. This dynamic may have led to the tale’s decomposition into fragments. Nevertheless, it also seems likely to me that this story always has been told in a piecemeal manner, that people have known episodes of the tale relating to their own locality better than others, or have brought elements from their own lives into the story. The Neang Chan story is a form of regional consciousness shared by Khmer people of the southern coastal complex. Certainly very few Khmer people outside this region know of it. In broad terms, it represents a unique narrative community to which all who tell the story of this queen belong. However, since fragmentation, claims of poor recollection and disavowal are also present in every contemporary rendition of the tale, these elements also offer important insights into the decentred character of regional identity. Episode by episode, residents of loosely connected Khmer localities affiliate to a region-wide narrative without claiming knowledge of the whole. According to this perspective, the story is a device by



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which residents of the dispersed localities of this region define their relationship to Neang Chan, and to each other, as members of a narrative confederation.

Temple-based Integration The confederated nature of Khmer settlement in this region is manifest in an institution known as a sala ten (branch shrine or neighbourhood hall). The province of Khleang alone has some 36 of these institutions. Sala ten serve as focal points for ritual activities in neighbourhoods that are affiliated to a central wat. They are prevalent where the dispersion of settlement along rivers and canals makes it difficult for laypeople to get to the wat. Four times each month, on prescribed vow-holding days, monks travel out to the surrounding neighbourhoods to enable laypeople to make merit by offering them food in the sala ten.23  Some wats have up to nine sala ten. Many sala ten have their own communal drinking source. Each has a ritual committee that organises fund raising and labour contributions for festivals held at the main wat. In several instances, each of the neighbourhood groups affiliated to a wat also maintains its own neighbourhood hall within the grounds of the wat where locals go to socialise, rest, cook and sleep during festivals. Neighbourhood clusters affiliated to such wats therefore are only weakly connected with each other, and indeed may never interact. They take part in activities at the wat as members of a confederation of loosely affiliated hamlets. The best example of this confederated structure is Wat Kompong Meancheay Tuk Pray in Long Phu, which in 2009 had 49 resident monks. Around 2,000 Khmer families support the wat, from nine different phum or neighbourhoods. The furthest phum is five kilometres from the wat. Each is connected to the wat by water. Each has its own sala ten for the monks to visit and for neighbours to meet. Each of these phum also maintains its own neighbourhood hall in the grounds of the wat for laypersons to rest and eat when they visit the wat. Some of the neighbourhood halls in the wat grounds are more beautiful and developed than others, attesting to the differentiation and lack of co-ordination between neighbourhood groups.24  Some 96 Theravada wats within the southern coastal complex attest to the vigorous communal life of its Khmer residents. Wats

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located on seasonally brackish waterways traditionally maintained a communal water reservoir of last resort, be that a pond, or sras, a rainwater tank, and/or an artesian bore. In Wat Sang Ke, for instance, the brackish water season lasted three months. In the 1950s, the temple had a 70-metre bore and a 2-metre deep rainwater-storing reservoir made of cement and bricks. During the dry season, locals came by boat to the temple to draw water from these sources. People residing downstream where the rivers were permanently brackish relied even more crucially on the temple water source. Wat Ghositaram on the banks of the Bac Lieu River had two sras sunk into clay, each 0.5 hectares in size. The abbot told me that when he arrived in 1979, they were the only ponds in this hamlet. “Everyone in Cu Lao hamlet came to draw water from them. They brought their buffaloes too.” Wats that are built on the phno of this region also maintained a water source used by people affiliated to the temple as a communal water source of last resort. A 78-year-old Teochiu man on Phno Cam Both told me of the importance of the temple pond in his youth: The water either side of the phno was very bad. It was both salty and sour. You could not drink it. Getting water during the dry season was a real problem. There was an extreme water shortage here. The families in this neighbourhood went to the temple to draw water from its two wells to cart back for their use. The wells are about five metres deep and have fresh water year round. Previously, there were no temples on the neighbouring phno— Phno Kan Cheu. During the dry season, people from that settlement would walk here, a distance of more than one kilometre across the fields, to fetch water for their use.

Several of the oldest wats in the region were built on naturally elevated ground to serve as a secure nodal point for residents dispersed along a nearby river system. Wat Bei Chhau, for instance, was built some 500 years ago on a high sand ridge. Laypeople told me it was built at this location because the surrounding land was prone to flooding, covered in jungle and full of wild animals. In wartime, temples such as this provided shelter to residents. During the Vietnam War, heavy fighting and bombing by the US led to large Khmer refugee movements, mostly away from the guerrillacontrolled rivers and swampy regions to the high land and the roads. Towards the end of this war, Wat Champa had 500 resident monks;



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many were young men evading conscription into the military. The abbot told me that life outside was dangerous so people fled to the temple for safety.25  Temples also served as educational centres. They provided what in most localities was the sole education available to Khmer children. The experiences of Opeachea Duong Nhon, the 80-year-old abbot of Wat Prek Ondaok, Thanh Phu provides an illustration: When I was young, schooling was difficult to access. I studied for just three years. At that time, temple schools offered Pali and religious subjects up to the primary level, for three years. It was the only education available locally. After graduating, monks who wanted to study further went to Cambodia to study in temples there. After my years of schooling here I went to Cambodia in 1947–48 and studied in the College Preah Sihanouk in Kompong Cham. I took the boat up the river, which was lined with Cham mosques and Vietnamese, who worked on the rubber plantations in eastern Kompong Cham.

As multifunctional centres for the communal provision of education, moral initiation, and care for the elderly and the dead, Theravada wats long have held a powerful attraction to local residents, and not just for the Khmer. A great number of monastics in the wats of the southern dune belt, who identify today as Khmers, trace their ancestry back to Chinese settlers who came here to make their living in the pre-colonial and colonial eras. Almost universally these monks of Chinese or mixed Chinese descent are not literate in Chinese, although their parents and grandparents often speak a southern Chinese dialect. Instead, they dedicate years to mastering the Khmer and Pali scripts. I have also met several monks of Vietnamese descent in the Khmer Theravada wats of this region. They all identify themselves ethnically as Vietnamese. Temples in this region are networked by water. Many wats are situated at a river junction, often on land donated by a wealthy layperson and built up by labour contributions from locals to create a large communal area. Most riverside wats have their own landings and a boat for monks to travel to religious ceremonies in the local community and further afield, similar to wats of the riverine regions to the west. People in the riverside settlements travel to their wats by boat. Those living along the phno walk or ride to them. Most wats

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each also have their own racing longboat tuuk ngo. This includes wats in many of the dune-based settlements, which all lie in close proximity to a tributary of the regional river system. A region-wide tuuk ngo racing festival takes place each year that pits the wats of the river basin against each other. Representatives of each temple gather at a central point in the river system to race their longboats against teams from other localities.26  According to one legend, the racing festival marks the demise of the fugitive queen Neang Chan.27  The races take place in November, when the water overflows the riverbanks, submerging all but the highest land. Around this time, villagers apologise to the river for offences against it and float fiery lanterns downstream. They launch paper lanterns skywards, and offer thanksgiving to the moon. Poree-Maspero regards the festival as a rite of expulsion, but also of propitiation, for abundance and a good harvest (1964: 407). On the last night of the races elders feed children mouthfuls of newly harvested rice.28  The racing festival also commemorates historical acts of military expulsion and defence. The races are considered by locals to originate from the time when the Khmer kingdom maintained a navy, when battles with other coastal powers were fought on water. As Poree-Maspero notes, competitions between naval units charged with defending various localities in the lower Bassac region were staged annually at Khleang as early as 1528 (1964: 383–4). Today the boat racing festival is an event which expresses the worldview of a confederation of dispersed localities that is interconnected by legends and by water. The three-day event brings together the scattered Khmer communities of the southern coastal complex: settlements on the rivers and those on the high land; communities of the interior and those of the coast. Spectators come by foot and by boat, crowding the banks of the watercourse to cheer their home team to victory, mingling for days in their tens of thousands. It is the biggest festival of the year, eclipsing the dry-season Khmer New Year festival. Only the regatta held at the same time in Phnom Penh is said to draw bigger crowds and more boats (Plate 2.3).

State-initiated Integration During the First Indochina War (1945–54), Khmers of the southern coastal complex competed with the Viet Minh in seeking independence for their own country. Elderly Khmers in Tam Quyt recall that



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Plate 2.3 Spectators watch the boat races in Soc Trang town

during this war, “liberated” Khmer villages flew the Cambodian flag, the yellow star flag flew in villages under Viet Minh control, and villages affiliated to the State of Viet Nam had their own flag as well. During the Second Indochina War, communist cadres tried to build up support among the Khmers, with partial success; several Khmer monks from this region are commemorated as revolutionary martyrs. Usually, Khmers supported whichever side was predominant in their area; oftentimes theirs was a split allegiance, to the RVN by day and to the “Viet Cong” by night. For its part, the RVN attempted to create a protective cordon along the northern part of the southern coastal complex by settling Catholic refugees from northern Vietnam in large numbers along the Soc Trang–Phung Hiep road and assisting them in swamp draining and agriculture. During both wars, this region received war refugees from the Ca Mau Peninsula and Hau Giang. For “security” reasons the annual boat racing festival was relocated from the Prek Umpu tributary to a canalised branch of the river system in Soc Trang City. Most report that the relocation took

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place in the early 1980s, although some say this move had occurred earlier, during the war. The change in venue shifted this festival away from a central hub of a Khmer-dominated river network into the heart of a predominantly Vietnamese-speaking provincial capital. The shift in venue from river to canal coincided with a rash of official hydraulic and regional integration projects which, as we shall see, disrupted the agrarian cycles, mobility patterns and cultural identifications traditionally associated with this festival. In the post-war years, the state pushed forward with many development initiatives to integrate this region and make it more economically productive. Major public works projects included a road to the coastal district of Vinh Chau. Built between 1979 and 1986, the road is a high causeway that runs for some 30 kilometres through salt marshes. Many Khmer people of the district were conscripted to build it.29  According to those who participated in its construction, their work was all done by hand, no machines were used. This project bridged the Peam Chan estuary, establishing a terrestrial connection between the Chrui Nhua isthmus and the rest of the mainland. Overcoming a persistent obstacle at the site where Queen Neang Chan drowned, the successful bridging of this river is represented by one leading abbot as a victory for the revolution. Perhaps too it marked the demise of this river as the primary basis for regional integration: During French times, the French tried to build a bridge over the Peam Chan estuary to Chrui Nhua yet they were unable to do so. Then later, the Americans tried again but they too were unable to bridge the estuary. Only after the revolution could this be done. There must have been some mysterious force preventing the bridging of the river. France colonised Vietnam for 100 years but could not bridge the river. America is the most powerful nation but they too were unable to do so.30 

The post-war government also dramatically expanded the canal network. The French had dug several large canals for communications and drainage. However, much of the area was still inundated, making land travel very difficult. As an elderly Teochiu resident of Phno Cam Both recalled: Before 1975, it was very hard to get to the market in Beichhau from here or visit other settlements. To the south was a vast lake of water, about 50 centimetres deep year round. The water was



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trapped between the high parallel phnos and could not flow away. So it just stayed there year round. If you had a boat, you could row to the other settlements. Otherwise, you just had to wade through mud and water up to your thighs to make the fourkilometre journey to Bei Chhau. Since the revolution, life has been really much easier for the Khmer people here. Canals were dug, draining the swamp, allowing people to move around.

However, for some phno dwellers canal digging had the opposite effect of isolating their settlements from water. Khmer elders at Wat Chroi Tam Chas observed: Here the groundwater is sinking because of so many canals and over irrigation. It is becoming difficult to get fresh water from the wells. It’s hard to get our racing boat out because the stream to the phno has narrowed and the water level has dropped. Also, the rowers cannot practise, since there is no large river nearby. It’s getting harder and harder for temples on the phno, like this one, to be competitive in the boat race.

These perceptions of change are intriguing because they suggest that this phno is rising high above and far from water, continuing a process that many Khmer phno dwellers believe to have been ongoing for thousands of years. River-dwelling Khmers note similar changes. A lot of the old water routes have been obscured by the massive digging of canals, especially under the post-war government. New routes have been opened up, following the canals. However, a lot of the old rivers have dried up as a result, stranding villages that once lay along busy waterways. Canal developments were intended to increase the supply of fresh water to enable agricultural intensification. Previously, lengthy saline incursions meant that just one rice crop a year could be grown. The canals brought in fresh water and allowed people to start growing two crops, along with vegetables and fruit trees. Some locals enthuse about such changes. The abbot of Wat Prek Ondaok is one: Now there are five or ten times as many canals in Soc Trang as in my youth. Near Tumposok, sluice gates were erected to keep out the salt water and canals were dug to bring fresh water in. These have allowed the growing of rice and have made Vietnam the world’s second largest exporter of rice. Everything has been planned so that the best crops can be grown at the best place

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and time for maximum productivity. The canal digging has been part of the 135 program which also provided roads, schools, health clinics, electricity, fresh water and sanitation to poor rural areas.

However, agricultural intensification policies also have their detractors. One commonly mentioned complaint concerns water contamination. Khmer people in Ta Meun told me that the water in their area became fresh for the first time in 1980, when canals brought in water from upstream along the Bassac. However, the water in canals and ponds is undrinkable because of the pesticide that is used to treat the new than nong hybrid rice variety. Middle-aged farmers affiliated to Wat Bei Chhau told me that this variety of rice needs a lot of pesticide to grow and has caused local fish stocks to decline. They told me that the seasonal rice grown in the past was cheap and easy to grow: “It required no pesticide. It was healthy to eat. It didn’t kill fish. Fish were much more plentiful then.” In coastal districts, the search for export-led incomes has induced local authorities to promote brackish shrimp aquaculture. Deep shrimp ponds have been dug throughout coastal areas and canals have been opened to the sea, allowing seawater to fill the ponds (Plate 2.4). Several communes are now flooded with salt water in their entirety, precluding alternative forms of land use. Many local Khmers had to sell their land because they could not afford to prepare their land for ponds. Some tried raising shrimp and made a loss, owing to the high cost of inputs, price fluctuations, or shrimp disease. Many dispossessed Khmers now work for the new owners of their land as shrimp farm security guards, packers or porters. Wages are good in this sector and it is common to see young landless labourers spending their monthly earnings on stylish motorbikes, clothes and hairstyles, as well as on drinking and gambling. Khmer shrimp-pond owners report that capital, information and experience help make the difference between a winner and a loser in this risky business, but they all see luck as a decisive factor. Indeed, the entire agrarian economy is characterised as a high-risk venture. The abbot of Wat Champa said that there is more profit today growing than nong compared with the seasonal rice of the past. “But this variety frequently fails. This year was a good one, but last year, farmers made no profit. Growing rice is like gambling.” Many farmers have become indebted in the uncertain circumstances



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Plate 2.4 Shrimp ponds by the coast in Vinh Chau

of the market economy. A resident of Ta Meurn told me that originally just five to six Khmer people lived in his village and all the land belonged to them. “Now there are several hundred residents and very few of them own land. The people who today own most of the land are Vietnamese who come from Saigon and other cities around the place.” Nevertheless, it is also obvious that many Khmers in this region have done very well out of the market economy— owning sumptuous houses, rice fields, shrimp ponds, petrol stations, restaurants, and cargo boats and contributing lavishly to temple construction. A third set of reforms was in the cultural sphere. During the 1980s and 1990s, school rooms were built in Khmer temples, where teachers, many of them ethnic Kinh, would teach the state curriculum, in Vietnamese, to local Khmer children. Today, more than 90 per cent of temples in Soc Trang have state schools on their grounds. Often these are the main focus of activity within a given temple. Somewhat unexpectedly, many leading monks of this region have been strong proponents of secular education. For instance, in 2010 Opeachea Duong Nhon was building an ethnic minority

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school for My Xuyen District in the grounds of Wat Prek Ondaok and was in the midst of extending the state school in the temple grounds. A school for training export labourers in trades they can use abroad is also on land belonging to the temple.31  The elderly abbot of Wat Ghositaram was even more insistent about the need for state education, seeing lack of education as the fundamental root of poverty and landlessness among Khmers. He told me he had mobilised Khmer laypeople to contribute funds for a state school in his temple after local state cadres had failed to deliver sufficient funds for the purpose. The Pali Supplementary Middle School was opened in Soc Trang Province in 1992, with support from leading local abbots.32  Despite its religious-sounding name, and location within Wat Khleang, an ancient Khmer temple in the heart of the city, the main emphasis in this school is on delivering the state secondary school curriculum to Khmer monks. The school teaches the state school curriculum from Years Six to Twelve. The medium of instruction is Vietnamese. The state pays teachers’ salaries and provides scholarships to over 200 selected monks to attend the classes. Student monks also undertake the alms round and regularly chant ritual blessings for laypeople for a fee, supplementing their scholarships. The school devotes several periods a week to teaching both Khmer and Pali, but the content in Buddhist and Khmer cultural studies is thin in comparison with the curriculum offered at the secondary level by the Buddhist association in Tra Vinh. Most tellingly, the school is viewed by its students as a state school equivalent and as a route to secular university education. The teaching of Khmer in state schools was introduced in the mid-2000s, but the policy was not evenly implemented. Moreover, it is an elective subject. Teachers observed that during the language classes many children just play and do not follow the lessons. As for the state schools in temple grounds, several monks and abbots complained that the noisy classes and the games of the children during breaks, plus the markets that spring up to serve the students disrupt monastic life and make meditation impossible.33  Meanwhile, monks still can take the monastic curriculum, but many temples do not offer it. Fewer subjects are offered than in monasteries across the Bassac River in Tra Vinh and the secondary level of the curriculum lasts just three years. In many temples south of the Bassac, Pali is not taught, since so few teachers know this language. Some teachers noted that the monastic curriculum places less emphasis on Khmer



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Plate 2.5 A state secondary school in a Khmer neighbourhood of Soc Trang town

than on Vietnamese. As a result, Khmer place names are no longer used or known and knowledge of Khmer and Buddhist traditions are weak. In sum, official efforts to integrate this region into the modern nation state appear to have had deeply contradictory effects. Some Khmer representatives maintain that these policies have connected, enriched and educated its Khmer populace. According to others, Khmers have been parochialised, impoverished and denied access to their traditional culture by these same policies. An obvious difference in perspective exists between a few senior Party-aligned abbots, who laud the government for effecting progress, and a large number of nonaligned outspoken elderly laypersons and younger educated monks who lament the changes as dissolution. To a significant extent, these different viewpoints reflect underlying ecological outlooks: “progressives” in these debates tend to come from riverside settlements while most of the “conservative” critics are drawn from the phno settlements. At the very least, the degree of dissension unleashed among Khmers of this region raises doubts about the success

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of the state-initiated integration effort. One might in addition ask whether the debate about development is indicative of a breakdown in the regional consensus that formerly united the Khmers of this river basin.

Domesticating Development Viewed in wider regional perspective, Khmers in the southern coastal complex have weathered state integration efforts with comparative success. Although many locals have been undermined by recent market-led development, others have chanced their hands in these uncertain conditions, and have prospered. Many have seized the opportunity presented by economic liberalisation to set up roadside businesses, and work in other parts of the country or abroad. Festivals and temple renovations are more exuberant here than most other parts of the delta, even though participation in monastic education is much lower than in areas north of the Bassac, and Khmer people’s literacy in Khmer is far weaker than their literacy in Vietnamese. Nevertheless, their confidence in the Khmer identity of their region is not diminished by these apparent signs of cultural decay. Many Khmer people in Soc Trang told me that up to 70 per cent of the province’s population is Khmer, and most of the rest are Chinese, an assertion baldly contradicting official figures that deem Khmers to be a minority in this province. Available explanations for the economically engaged and cosmopolitan traits of this locality mostly stress exogenous factors and non-Khmer actors. As we have seen, many locals assign credit or blame to the Vietnamese state for promoting the development of such characteristics. By contrast, historians have contended that mobility, commoditisation and intercultural exchanges already were entrenched in this region during the colonial era (Brocheux 1995).34  The colonial economy and plural society in turn overlaid a preexisting translocal Chinese trading economy and intercultural “water frontier” that Nola Cooke and Li Tana contend was present in this region at least as early as the eighteenth century (Cooke and Li 2004). Such explanations overlook the Khmer contribution to this region’s development and the ecological context that shaped their responses to exogenous opportunities and threats. Well before their exposure to the turbulence and risks of the modern economic environment, Khmers in this region lived at the



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edge of an ocean full of resources and economic opportunities. However, the maritime environment was also harsh. Land and water needed for survival were in short supply. The people’s ability to survive was made possible by an elegant adaptation to physical geography that, in the right conditions, enabled high residential concentrations to develop. In a coastal and estuarine environment characterised by scarcity and ecological complexity people made a living by selling local surpluses and buying in subsistence needs. Such exchanges were facilitated by a waterborne communications network that links local settlements and markets with wider trade routes. Although Khmer localities in this region are dispersed and ecologically diverse, locals managed to develop a unifying cultural focus though narrative and ritual practices that drew their dispersed localities into a decentred and resilient confederation. The river system that runs through the southern coastal complex and provides an integrating focus for its broadly dispersed Khmer residents has also shaped their encounters with exogenous forces and actors. The migratory livelihoods, and involvement in trade and transport for which Khmers of this river basin today are renowned, are not unprecedented in a region where water-based mobility long has been integral to the maintenance of Khmer livelihoods and sociality. The highly developed boat culture of the Khmers of Soc Trang and Bac Lieu is one reason why people from these areas are so well represented in the Khmer diaspora. Many were able to escape from these parts by boat in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In turn they have sent money home that their relatives have used to invest in water-based businesses and transport activities. Qualities such as being open to outsiders and external influences are among the stereotypes applied to Khmers of this region. Such characteristics are also prominent in the stories local Khmers tell about their cultural origins. The majority of Khmer place names in this river basin are associated with travellers who arrived in the locality in the course of river-borne or seagoing voyages. This is true even of those settlements situated along the ancient coastal dunes, whose contemporary residents believe themselves to be protected from water by various magical objects and entities. In almost all cases, these protective objects, after which their localities are named, originate from the water itself. The rapid uptake of Vietnamese language among Khmers in this region also can be understood in the context of a region which has received many migrants from

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southern China, whose dialects Khmers have adopted as a regional lingua franca. Migrants from southern China have been just as proactive in assimilating Khmer influences, often studying in Khmer institutions and adopting the Khmer language and a Khmer identity. Vietnamese language is the most recent borrowing in a locality whose residents have been quick to adopt influences from outside their ancestral cultural tradition. The traditional role played by Buddhist wats as institutions that confederate people from diverse localities has been adapted flexibly to contemporary circumstances. Khmers of the southern coastal complex are given to lavish temple renovations, sometimes entirely reconstructing a temple after only two decades or so in service. Reading the commemorative plaques, one can see that many of the biggest donors are Khmer locals who now live overseas, along with local entrepreneurs of different ethnicities. State authorities also are eager to have their own contributions to the renovations recorded for posterity. Temples are a site for young migratory labourers to gather to gamble on their holidays and rest days, and are frequented by hawkers, throughway traffic, impromptu volleyball matches and drinking parties, despite signs that announce such practices are forbidden. Khmer people from this region also travel to temples far from their home villages to participate in religious festivals. Monks in this province have acted assertively to defend such practices against state interference. In 2007, 200 monks in Wat Khleang protested an official restriction on the kathin ceremony that threatened the logic of this merit-making festival as a means for people to participate in an extra-local sphere of Buddhist sociality.35  Enthusiasm among senior Party-aligned clerics for state education could be seen as the endorsement of a paradigm that equates modernisation with Vietnamisation. However, there are strong indications in this region that many of the developments initiated by the state have been assimilated into a local idiom. According to one local narrative, Khmers were once insular and poor, owing to their failure to study. People were fearful and did not trust each other because for them Buddhism was a custom inherited from their ancestors that they did not properly understand. A Khmer meditation teacher told me that before 1985, Prek Chek used to have salty water for many months each year. That was before the government built canals and dykes and the area began receiving fresh water year round. He explained:



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That was the era of Pream sasana, when people used amulets and drank magical water from the temple instead of medicine, and consulted ghost doctors, kru khmuich, to banish ghosts and cast curses. They used bows and arrows, sometimes dipped in poison. It was before people understood Buddhism properly. That time lasted until about ten years after liberation. People were taught that their former way of life was incorrect and gradually came to understand Buddhism properly.

In this idiomatic account of post-war history, Buddhist enlightenment coincides with public waterworks and the opening of the market economy. Pream sasana, the pre-Buddhist era of primitive superstition, refers to the era before infrastructure works, rice intensification and the market economy: a time of localism, and incidentally of socialism. This is a way of owning the changes of the mid-80s as Buddhist—domesticating post-socialist modernity as Buddhist. The tendency among many Khmers in this region to domesticate state-initiated development can be illustrated by noting some contemporary permutations of the Neang Chan tale. In an area just to the west of this river basin, canals have been dug that have extended the river system. Locals say the canals were dug by Neang Chan during a sojourn in their locality. Neang Chan canal is located in the precincts of Vi Thanh City, Hau Giang Province. A Khmer student in Can Tho City reported to me his conversations with locals in the vicinity. Danh Thanh, 56-years-old of Vi Thanh, related the tale: Around 650 years ago, Neang Chan came and settled right here in this place with the people. She worked with the people to dig a canal for water and for irrigating the crops during the dry season. Then, when she heard that the king had found out where she lived, she moved on to another place. Afterwards, in honour of her memory and to show their gratitude, the local people named the irrigation canal after her.

Khmer people who are engaged in various modern economic activities also seek protection from Neang Chan in making a living when sojourning far from home. A young Khmer woman who runs a small cafe beside Wat Phno Pon in Vinh Chau told me that people remove a few grains of sand from Neang Chan’s grave to take home and put in their incense burners. She took a pinch of dust from the incense burner on the altar in the front room of her cafe and showed

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it to me. “We believe this brings us luck and good fortune.” She had requested Neang Chan’s protection for herself and her family before travelling to Malaysia to work in a factory. Remittances from this young woman’s own difficult and unpleasant sojourn as a labour migrant had helped to start this cafe. Others, reportedly, have taken this practice a step too far and remove pieces of stone from the grave itself, which they throw into ponds in which shrimp are raised for export. The pebbles are believed to make the shrimp magically grow, safe from disease. Such allegedly “Vietnamese” practices incite anger and calls for better protection of the gravesite. These stories reveal that the body of the queen continues to decompose in ways that nourish both local livelihoods and Khmer cultural identifications. In the educational realm, although state-subsidised secular education for monks has the potential to divert Khmers away from this localised folkloric tradition, it also allows Khmer people from different parts of this region to meet in a central location, the Pali school. There, they are able to discuss elements of the Neang Chan legend and share with others stories about this queen’s episodes told in their own localities. In the dormitories of the Pali school in Wat Khleang, monks and their visiting relatives have related to me numerous episodes of this story that tie their home villages into the journeys of this queen. Young student residents of Wat Khleang have provided the most comprehensive accounts of Neang Chan’s travels through this region that I have heard. Wat Khleang itself, I was told by school students, originally was a storehouse built by the fugitive Cambodian queen for storing weapons and food. Although this state-subsidised school does not permit the teaching of local Khmer history and geography, it does enable a new generation of Khmer youth to share stories about their own experiences and outlooks, using the idiom of this regional narrative tradition.

Disintegration and Rebirth The coastal plain south of the Bassac River provides an intriguing case study of a Khmer-populated region founded on connection, commerce and cultural exchange. The vibrant and self-confident Khmer culture of this locality challenges the pervasive view among outsiders that Khmer identity is necessarily predicated on insularity, autarchy and stasis. Nevertheless, what passes for Khmer culture might be seen by purists as evidence of the disintegration of traditional Khmer



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culture in one of its last surviving bastions. One will find few classic Khmer identity markers such as sarongs, stilt houses and sugar palm trees in this locale. Gambling, drinking and big spending are rife. Khmer literacy is low, Buddhist studies is weak and the young people who visit their local temple these days mostly do so in order to attend the Vietnamese state school within its grounds. These trends, and the fact that local performances of the Buddhist-influenced Khmer musical theatre Lakorn Bassac borrow freely from non-Khmer and non-Buddhist elements sometimes leads their compatriots across the river in Preah Trapeang to observe that local Khmers have lost touch with their cultural roots. Disintegration is also the central motif in the history of this region told by its Khmer residents. The story of Neang Chan is a vivid depiction of social, cultural and material decomposition. It tells of a marital bond rendered asunder, flight into the margins and death alone in the wilderness. It is about the shedding of cultural status, from royal to outcaste and from human being to animal and plant. As she flees downriver, the deposed queen first abandons the trappings of civilisation: her comb, umbrella, storage basket, a halfcooked meal, and a spittoon or urinal. She then takes leave of her escape craft and casts herself into the water, where her body disintegrates as she continues seawards. The story belongs within a familiar Khmer genre of origin myths that include a decline, a descent, or a fall. Its theme of total disintegration also may offer insights into how local Khmers experience life in a region marked by intense cultural exchanges, rapid social and political change and corrosive economic and environmental practices. But as we have seen, disintegration is highly productive. The body of the Khmer queen decomposes prolifically into all of the plant and animal species that nourish life on the littoral. Places are named, events old and new are emplotted into a single widely known narrative line. The river’s seasonal cycles are identified and the contours of its complex tributaries defined with remarkable precision. Local confidence and regional identifications are reinforced by the participation of Khmer people in a distinct genre of story-telling that links disparate localities and occurrences to the demise of a Khmer queen along the region’s river system. Through this device they situate themselves narratively within a confederation of Khmer localities that continues to be nourished by tales of the decomposition of this royal figure.

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3 Freshwater Rivers: Displacement and Refuge along the Rivers of the Central Delta Midway between the Vietnam–Cambodia border and the South China Sea, and extending to the north and the south of the Bassac River, is a distinct Khmer culture area, which I call the freshwater river zone. Settlement patterns, livelihoods, communications, and religious practices of the Khmers of this region bear the imprint of its most prominent natural feature, a multitude of small freshwater rivers or prek. This Khmer culture area is encompassed by the presentday provinces of Vinh Long, Can Tho and Hau Giang, and extends into Tra Vinh and Soc Trang provinces. However, only around 60 wat-based villages are found within it, comprising approximately one eighth of the actively identifying Khmer communities in Vietnam. This Khmer-settled area lies within the central Mekong Delta, a natural sub-region where water and soil conditions and riverine linkages combine to create one of the most favourable environments in Indochina for human habitation (Map 3.1). Defining this subregion are the delta’s two main distributaries, the Mekong and Bassac rivers, which flow in a southwest direction roughly parallel to each other some 30 kilometres apart. Alluvium carried downriver and over the banks during floods has been deposited in a broad strip between and to either side of these rivers. This oblong-shaped tract of fertile soil is pressed between areas to the north and the south where acid sulphate and saline soils predominate. The water in the central delta is fresh year round and flooding is moderate. To the northwest is the delta’s high floodplain, which floods annually to a depth in excess of three metres. To the southeast is the coastal zone, affected by lengthy 102



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Map 3.1   The central Mekong Delta

saline incursions. Permanently inundated depressions stretch north to the Cambodian border and south into the Ca Mau Peninsula. The two big rivers that run through the central delta are major thoroughfares and connect localities in this region to the Cambodian heartlands and the ocean. The central delta is prosperous, with an economy based on rice, fruit orchards and fishing. It is renowned for its cosmopolitan horticultural civilisation that, according to Vietnamese historians, was developed by pioneer migrants from present-day Central Vietnam, who are said to have encountered a wilderness when they settled there in the 1700s (Son Nam 1992: 49, 51). The region is densely populated, although the population is not evenly distributed. Most people live along river levees where the land is higher. The population falls rapidly as one moves away from the riverbanks.1  Although

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not usually acknowledged by its Vietnamese-identifying residents, the central delta has long been an important Khmer culture area. It is home to a substantial Khmer population with a unique riverbased civilisation and a network of temples, many of which were established long before Vietnamese arrived in the region. Visiting in the late 1890s, one French scholar reported 20,000 Khmers in the province of Can Tho alone (Aymonier 1900: 143). However, competition over the freshwater rivers at the heart of the delta has been intense and Khmers have ceded much of this favourable and strategic location to others. Historical research shows that in the nineteenth century, Khmers still lived to the north of the Mekong River but they were subject to assimilation and displacement (Choi 2004). Today no Khmer temple-based villages are to be found in the provinces of Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre or Dong Thap, whose contemporary residents identify almost exclusively as Kinh. Khmer villages are concentrated in the south and east of the central delta, on either side of the Bassac River. In a number of localities to the north and south of the Bassac, elderly Khmer people tell stories about how, generations past, their predecessors were driven away from the banks of the main rivers. They resettled and reconstructed their temples in their present locations, along the smaller tributaries of the interior. During the First and Second Indochina wars (1945–75) this region was a theatre of fierce conflicts, which caused the massive displacement of its remaining Khmer population. Thriving Khmer settlements along the freshwater rivers disintegrated, their inhabitants fled, and their land was taken over by newcomers. Contemporary Khmer residents struggle to rebuild their temples, transmit their language, and reclaim a tenuous foothold in riverside localities where, until the late colonial era, they were in the majority. Stories about refugee movements in ancient and modern times circulate widely in this region, along with tales about statues that miraculously float to the river’s surface, offering protection to its displaced Khmer population and a meaningful framework through which to view their history.

Histories of Settlement and Flight Khmer settlement in this fertile region has ancient antecedents. At its eastern fringe are temples considered to be the oldest in Kampuchea



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Krom: Wat Sambua, in Kompong Spien (Cau Ke), reputedly built in 373 CE, and Wat Kompong Rholien in Vung Liem dated to 632 CE. In the inundated plain to the north of the Mekong River stands Pram Loveng a seventh-century tower of brick and stone (Aymonier 1900: 139). Near Can Tho, known as Prek Russei (Bamboo River), the remains of a thirteenth-century hospital were discovered, built during the reign of the Cambodian king Jayavarnam VII (Malleret 1946: 23). A clue as to the economic activities formerly practised in this region comes from the place name Sa Dec, a town on the Mekong River, which is believed to derive from the Khmer term Psar Dek (iron market). Another place name Long Ho (Khmer Long Hor) is said to derive from a boating mishap in which a Khmer royal official drowned. One of the most intriguing sites is a temple in a hamlet called Ba Pho, in Tam Binh District, Vinh Long, at the centre of the freshwater river region. The colloquial name for this temple is Wat Chas (old temple). Its full name is Wat Mangkol Borei Tro Nhuom Saek, translated by locals as Happy Seat of the Kingdom where Parrots Nest. Locals explained the name: It was a nesting place for parrots. Borei means site where the king, an official, or governor of a province was based. This temple is really old. It has had 15 abbots. The temple has a koki tree that is larger than the largest in Wat Ang in Tra Vinh. This indicates that the temple is even older than Wat Ang [believed to be over 1,000 years old]. The syllable Ang in Mangkol is the same as that in Angkor Wat. The temple also has some red stone blocks of the kind found only in the time of Angkor Wat. The offering hall has wooden beams cut in octagonal shape and a wooden bed like those found in royal households. From this we can deduce that the temple was the seat of a very high official in the Khmer empire—higher than a provincial governor. It would have been the seat of the Sadeach Krang, who oversaw all of Kampuchea Krom. No one knows his name.

Khmer residents of O Mal (O Mon) contend that their locality too was a centre of the Khmer kingdom, on an arm (dai ) of the delta that served as a highway to the sea. Locals call this section of the Bassac River Prek Russei (Bamboo River). It was situated midway between seasonally flooded upper Cambodia, where the Khmer capital was based, and the perpetually flooded lands below. In the distant

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past, the area was covered by swamps and forest. In the 1200s, the son of the Khmer king came to this region, sent by his father, to develop its potential. He settled for a period of years in the village known today as Thoi An, on the bank of the Bassac, noted for its grapefruit that thrive on the high levee above the reach of the floodwaters.2  Kompong Spien, or Bridge Landing, in present-day Tra Vinh, falls within this region, according to some of its residents.3  Although it overlaps with the coastal zone, evidenced by the several ancient coastal dunes in the district, most of its 22 Khmer temples stand beside freshwater rivers that flow into the Bassac. It abounds with fruit trees such as grapefruit, banana, areca and water coconut palms. The ubiquity of bamboo is registered in place names such as Prek Russei Srok (bamboo district river), Wat Veluvone (bamboo forest temple—reportedly founded at least 800 years ago), and Wat Mei Pang (big bamboo shoot temple). The district’s present name Cau Ke is said to record the visit of a functionary of the Khmer king, who came and planted a coconut tree. It supposedly was a kind of coconut called cau ke, with a short trunk and small sweet fruit that originated from Malaysia. Khmers today do not live along the big rivers that run through this region. Instead they live along the small local rivers or prek, that branch away to either side, usually at right angles to them. About 35 of these rivers radiate outward from the Bassac River between the edge of the high floodplain in the west and the fringe of the salineaffected area in the east.4  The water in them is tidal, but it is fresh year round. Opinion is divided as to the formation and function of these natural rivers. One early view was that they drain water into the Bassac from the swampy plains on either side of the main delta channel.5  An alternative view is that they act as subsidiaries of the delta’s main channels, carrying floodwater that surges through breaches in their banks into the low-lying land on either side (Van Lier 1980: 266).6  A monk in Wat Polthisomrong on the O Mal River provided a local perspective on how the prek adjacent to his wat was formed: In the distant past this area was covered by forest. At that time the O Mal River didn’t exist. It was instead a pathway used by elephants to walk through the forest. Water seeped into the meandering depression created by their feet until eventually the



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elephants had to abandon the path. They were replaced by freshwater crocodiles. Over time, the passage of crocodiles widened and deepened the watercourse, expanding the river to its present size. One day a man called Mal came to the river and, finding it an ideal place to make a living, settled down. From that time the river took his name. It was later Vietnamised as O Mon.

Many of the stories told by locals relate that Khmers once lived along the banks of the big rivers and were forced to abandon their villages and temples and flee upstream for safety. An elderly man living beside Wat Polthisomrong in O Mon told me that originally the temple had been in a different site and had been relocated, long ago, when a wave of new migrants arrived on the scene: Wat Polthisomrong was founded 400 years ago, maybe earlier. But it was in a different location, next to where the O Mon River meets the Bassac, the big river ( prek thom), about three kilometres downstream from here. Two hundred years ago, Viet people started arriving in that area. My grandparents told me that Khmer people did not like living crowded alongside those people. When Viet people settled there, the Khmers abandoned their land and wat and moved further up the O Mon River to re-establish their wat here.

His account was confirmed by senior monks in the temple. The Pali teacher told me the relocation had been precipitated by violence involving outside groups: This wat originally was located in an elevated region in Thoi An, a commune by the Bassac River. In the 1800s, conflicts occurred between members of the Buu Son Ky Huong faith7  and the Khmer community of Thoi An, which forced the Khmers to relocate to the site of present-day O Mon market where they reconstructed the wat.

A similar story was told by residents of the Khmer settlement of Angko Li in Binh Minh District, Vinh Long, north of the Bassac River. The abbot of one of the temples told me: This wat is nearly 400 years old, built in 1672. It was formerly located about three kilometres south of here, closer to the main river. But long ago, people were forced to abandon the wat and rebuild here. I don’t know exactly what it was that forced them

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to flee that location. But they did so out of fear. The elderly people have told me it was probably a tiger terrorising the villagers, or ghosts, or some enemy or another. They relocated upstream, where it was safer.

The tigers or ghosts that drove Khmer residents away from their homes in the distant past appear to be a euphemism for enemies of a human cast, whose exact identity might be difficult to specify in contemporary circumstances. This is suggested by the stories told about Wat Mangkol Borei, the ancient temple believed once to have been regional seat of the Khmer kingdom. The temple is located along a tributary of the Mang Thit River, a large watercourse that connects the Bassac and Mekong rivers. Curiously, no Khmer people live nearby this temple. It does have some resident young Khmer monks, who told me that the wat is not in its original location. Previously it had been situated on the banks of the Mang Thit, about one and a half kilometres downstream, at a site occupied by an army base. A senior achar explained: The foundations of the former temple still can be seen. They are difficult to inspect, because the site is now occupied by a Vietnamese army base. But vestiges and gold from the temple remain there. Periodically, a golden supporting pillar from the temple would float to the surface of a pond at that site. Older people with whom I have spoken have seen this happen themselves. But then a shack was set up over the pond for use as a toilet and from that time on the golden pillar has never once surfaced.

According to a story told to me by the young monks and several locals, the previous temple site was abandoned because one of the monks at that site had been attacked and eaten by a tiger. After that happened, the temple was rebuilt at its present location upriver. However, the senior achar told me that it was not a tiger that had forced the relocation, but wars, which took place long ago. These wars had forced residents to abandon their village and temple and flee upstream for safety. In fact, a similar incident of dislocation already had happened to this village once before: the Mang Thit River was the second place where this temple had been built.8  I asked the achar when these wars had taken place and he said this was long before the French and American wars:



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It is difficult to verify when the temple was rebuilt at this site because, unfortunately, during the wars, all the records were abandoned and destroyed. But the koki tree in the grounds of the temple has been tested scientifically and its age determined as over 700 years. Some think this the oldest tree in Kampuchea Krom.

After resettling here and rebuilding their temple, war again broke out and the Khmer people living here were forced to flee for a third time. The achar continued: “Everyone fled. That is why today no Khmers are left living in the vicinity of this temple. All of the surrounding households are Vietnamese.” The refugees resettled several kilometres further upstream along this tributary where they again rebuilt the wat. The temple at the new site is called Wat Prek Chuok Thmei. Locals give its founding date as 1601. Today it has an estimated lay population of 1,000 households. Fortunately, the old temple was not destroyed. Its resident monks come from the village upstream and said they are stationed here to look after the temple (Plate 3.1). Every day these monks travel upstream by boat to conduct the alms round in their home settlement. Since funds are needed to maintain the temple buildings, some income is earned by renting out its grounds to Vietnamese neighbours, who use them to cultivate fruit trees. The anxieties about encroachment and the potential loss of this site can be detected in a tale about the ancient koki tree in the temple grounds. According to one layman, the tree has the power to defend itself: In the past, a Viet man bought the tree and tried to cut it down. He took a saw and by day’s end had cut deep into its base. The next day he returned to continue the task, but the incision had filled in overnight. He resumed cutting and again made it only part-way through the trunk by nightfall. Once again, the next morning, he found the wound had healed. For a third time he took to the tree with his saw, but on that third night, when he returned home, he dropped dead, blood spurting from his mouth.

Self-healing trees and magically resurfacing relics are among the elements of a folk history of this region that refuse to be repressed. These stories reveal a pattern of Khmer people forced to abandon villages and temples situated by major rivers and set up new settlements in areas upstream, sometimes repeatedly. In a euphemistic manner, the enemies that drove Khmer people away from the open

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Plate 3.1 Resident monks repairing alms-seeking boat, Wat Mangkol Borei

water are described as ghosts and tigers, yet details clearly identify the human agents whom the storytellers hold responsible. These dislocations are linked to conflicts of the distant past and yet the stories also allude to displacements that are more recent.

Life in the Freshwater River Region In the 1940s, Khmers in this region lived primarily along the prek that flow out from the Bassac River. The banks of these small natural watercourses were favoured for residence since they are significantly higher than the adjacent flatlands. Alluvium has accreted along the vegetated edges of these rivers, forming elevated banks of silt. In the high water season, water spills over the banks of the prek and covers the surrounding lower land. As recalled by elderly locals, the flatlands once were covered with water for most of the year. They were drained by the intensive canal digging programmes of the late 1970s. Residence on the banks also protected residents from all but the most severe floods. This part



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Plate 3.2 Khmer houses along the riverbank in O Mon

of the delta flooded annually to a moderate depth, higher than in the coastal zone, but less than in the border areas. The flood season lasted on average three months and peaked in October.9  When it did flood heavily, such as when high tides coincided with storms, the banks were the last points in the whole region to go under water and the first to emerge when the water subsided. Khmer people’s houses sit atop the banks, once aligned in narrow ribbons along the river’s edge. Since the banks are of uneven elevation, settlement originally clustered at the highest points. Successive generations built their houses alongside those of their parents and siblings, resulting in the segmentation of each river into a sequence of extended-family neighbourhoods, called phum. One can still see examples of riverside phum along rivers north and south of the Bassac River (Plate 3.2). Until two generations ago, when hardwood timber became scarce, houses often were built on stilts.10  People also supplemented the banks by excavating river silt for household platforms. At the same time, the riverside location provided residents access to a year-round source of water for domestic consumption and

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agriculture. This is the only Khmer settlement zone in the Mekong Delta where the surface water is naturally fresh and drinkable year round. Riverside dwellers bathe in the river and use bamboo or oil-drum pontoons, accessed by ramps, to wash clothes and utensils. Water is drawn from the river for animals, gardens and household use. Until concerns about pesticide overuse became prevalent in the mid-1990s, most people would drink from the river during the dry season and use its water for cooking.11  During the wet season, however, rainwater was universally preferred. Each household had a number of clay jars, peng tuk pleang, which were used to capture and store rainwater. Some were more than a metre high. Two or three jars of such size stored enough water to meet the drinking needs of an average family throughout the dry season. However, only a minority of families could afford enough of these purchased items to tide them through the dry season and the majority relied on the river for drinking water during this time.12  A characteristic feature of Khmer livelihoods in the freshwater river region is the cultivation of fruit trees, such as mangoes, bananas, pomelo, oranges and mandarins, which need year-round fresh water. Fruit trees are cultivated only on the riverbanks and on purposely made silt mounds, because prolonged immersion in water rots their trunks. Trees are planted in and around the household compounds, and to their rear, where the land begins to fall away. Today fruit is grown intensively for commercial sale, while in the mid-twentieth century, according to Khmer people in different parts of this region, it usually was only for domestic use. Rice is grown on the periodically inundated lower land, away from the rivers. This area is one of the few parts of the Mekong Delta that does not suffer from saline or acid soils (Nguyen Huu Chiem 1995). The soil was naturally fertile, since it received regular deposits of alluvium. The traditional varieties of seasonal rice included floating rice (srau laeng tuk), which was present in western areas of O Mal (O Mon) and Setadaw (Co Do). Sown at the onset of the rains, just after the Khmer New Year, the long-stemmed rice plants rose and collapsed in tandem with the water level and were harvested once the floods had subsided. In the rest of the region, people grew srau thngun (heavy rice), with an average six-month growing season and stalks that typically were just one metre high.13  The waterways also provide the basic transport infrastructure. They link houses within a settlement to each other and connect



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Figure 3.1   Riverbank land use, the central delta

people in this region to population centres and markets elsewhere. Many Khmer riverside households still have a rowboat, moored to a small landing in front of the house. Until the 1990s, the rivers were the sole practical means of transport, since land tracks were small and unsealed and became quagmires in the wet season. The river route was circuitous and involved charting a zig-zag course from one stream to the next, but usually it was the easiest and most direct way to get from one settlement to the next. An elderly resident of the commune of Dinh Mon in O Mon described the scene in his youth in the 1940s: At that time there were no roads, only narrow dirt paths. No bridges either, just some “monkey bridges” of a single bamboo pole. Where there was no bridge you crossed the river on a raft of lashed banana tree trunks. Houses were right beside the river. Every household had its own boat. To go anywhere you had to travel by boat. I went each day to my ricefields, three kilometres downstream from here by paddling a wooden boat. Motorboats appeared on the river only in the 1960s, but in 1976 everyone reverted to paddling and sailing because of a shortage of fuel.

Another characteristic of this region is that all of its wats are located on rivers, which, until recently, were the only means of gaining access to them. The wats are on the highest land in each settlement. Most sit at the junction of two waterways. The front gate of each opens onto the river. The wats are connected to each other by water in a network that gives the region an integrated character. Every wat had its own boat and boat landing, either a walled dock, or a jetty (Plate 3.3). Several of these landings still are in use today. Some are covered, serving as a rest house for travellers, tha la, a feature one

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Plate 3.3 Boat landing, Wat Neryvone, on the river in Dinh Mon

also sees near land-based wats. They are constructed by a layperson to make merit. Laypersons also build footbridges to help pedestrians across the small streams that flow into the main rivers. As in other Khmer-settled regions, the wats are the focal point for Khmer communal life in the freshwater river region, with the main difference being that water provides the sole medium of connection between these institutions and the households that support them. Khmer people in Kompong Spien recall travelling by river in the late 1970s to attend temple festivals in their district. Neighbours pooled fuel, outboard engines and boats to make the journey together in those tough economic times. Footpaths in that locality ran along the crests of ancient dunes, but they were invaded by thickets of bamboo, so vehicles couldn’t pass, and bamboo spikes sprouted through the sand, making it difficult to walk along in bare feet. And all of the wats were connected by rivers, so travel by boat was the better option. In the 1940s, the alms round was conducted by river in all Khmer localities within this region, although it has been discontinued



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in most places owing to the dispersion of these communities during the wars. Reminiscences about Wat Aranyut on the Cho River in Hau Giang recall the river as a site of localised religious travel: Khmer people lived on both sides of this river along a three kilometre stretch. The wat had its own boats that the monks used to undertake the alms round. Two monks sat in each boat, accompanied by two kmien wat [temple boys] who paddled, one sitting at the front of the boat, the other at the rear. As they went from one house to the next, they would sound a gong to let laypeople know they were arriving. The alms round by river lasted until 1968, when people abandoned the settlement, most never to return.14 

Close by every wat is a busy river dock, rice mill, market or service centre, so even though some still are not accessible by road, one cannot call these institutions remote. Clearly this regional network of Khmer river-based settlements, while distinctive and discrete, was never closed, for it relied for integration on river routes, which also open up the settlements to the wider world. Today the waterways are busy with cargo craft that hail from various provinces in the delta and pass directly in front of people’s houses. Recalling his youth in the 1940s, an elderly resident of Dinh Mon noted: Rice cargo boats were smaller than today. They were propelled along by people using paddles and poles. They would fly a special flag on the boat to indicate that they were buying rice and when those on the bank with rice to sell saw it they would wave the boat in. The rice traders were always Teo [ethnic Chinese]. The boat people were both Viet and Teo.

Although producing rice for the market, Khmers relied on others to trade it: In those days, Khmer people did not use money much. They obtained goods on credit and paid for them in rice. The storekeepers were Teo. So were the people in the market centres. Khmer people did not know how to trade. All we knew was farming.

The combination of access to fresh water, fertile soil, waterborne transport and trading routes was highly favourable and allowed the Khmers of this region to prosper. In the pre-war era, there were

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several indicators of prosperity in the Khmer villages of Dinh Mon. One was land concentration. In the 1940s, when the average size of land holdings in the villages was around five hectares, several wealthy families had up to 100 hectares of land. It is recalled that most Khmers in this locality were landholders, while Viets more often were tenants and itinerant traders. A second index of a household’s wealth was the number of cows owned; they were used to pull carts and to break up the land prior to sowing. A third marker of differentiation was housing style. Only wealthier families had stilt houses. Poorer families built their houses on the ground. Also as mentioned, most families drew their water from the river during the dry season, while the better-off consumed water from rainholding jars. Youths from materially disadvantaged families frequently ordained and pursued a wat-based education. As is the case elsewhere in the Theravada world, poorer members of the community utilised the wats as an avenue of social mobility. Each wat had its own monastic school. The curriculum was a combination of Buddhist and secular subjects, taught by monks and achars in the Khmer language, identical to the curriculum of the reformed wat schools elsewhere in the Mekong Delta and in Cambodia. Most of my elderly male interlocutors in this region were from poor families. In the late French colonial era they had ordained and studied for several years in wats in their locality. An elderly man from a poor family in Dinh Mon, who was regarded as one of the most knowledgeable people in his district observed: Most people in my generation are literate in Khmer. We learned it in the wat school, where lessons were in Khmer. A primary education was very high standard. School was much better quality than today.

In the colonial period, Khmer children in this region would continue studying at a Khmer and French language state school. Many undertook studies at secondary level at L’Ecole Phan Thanh Gian in Can Tho, the only Franco–Khmer secondary school in Cochinchina. For some, ordination in the local wat was the first step in a path that led to centres of monastic learning in Cambodia. Of itself, ordination earned merit and prestige for those who undertook it. Elderly achars in Prek Chouk, Vinh Long said that in



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their youth they felt compelled to ordain. They spoke of ordination as a debt a boy owes to his parents, especially his mother, who would be sad if he did not ordain. Also one could not marry if one had not ordained, such were the expectations of prospective in-laws. The other reason for ordaining was to learn the language. “If you know how to speak but not write, it is as if you do not know the language. Naturally, a man wants to learn how to write in order to be better than others [meaning women].” Ordination also was a springboard into secular education and government service in both Cochinchina and Cambodia. Several respected abbots from the freshwater river region had spent time in Cambodia. Their sojourns in Cambodia are often associated with the acquisition of mystical powers. The abbot of Wat Veluvone once disappeared. No one knew where he had gone until years later his spirit returned to inform his family that he was presently meditating on a mountain in Cambodia. A former Opeacheah in Hau Giang studied for more than two decades in Cambodia before returning to teach meditation.15  One of his pupils, who also spent time in Cambodia in the 1970s in the Vietnamese army, claims to have seen the Buddha and attained enlightenment during meditation. The former abbot of Wat Phesachavonna knew all of the birds in his wat by name. He bathed with turtles in the river next to the wat ; each Khmer New Year, three turtles would surface in front of the wat. Intriguingly, these mystical deeds reprised acts associated with the founding of temples in the freshwater region. Wat Ta Thieu near Cau Ke town is called Wat Kampong Bat (Port of the Disappearance). Locals relate that the person who founded this fourteenthcentury wat disappeared, suggesting he may have been the kind of meditative ascetic who could vanish at will. Wat Aranyut, thought to have been established in 1632, originally was founded as a meditative retreat in the jungle along a quiet tributary of the Cai Rang River, some 15 kilometres from the Bassac. Gradually as the forest was cleared and wild animals were pacified by the teachings of the Buddha, a settlement built up along its banks around the wat. By 1945, locals estimated, 200 Khmer families lived along this stretch of the river. However, by the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, only 20 Khmer families were left. How did this longstanding riverside settlement, and many others like it, come to suffer this reversal of fortune?

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The Indochina Wars and the Loss of the Waterways The First Indochina War 1945–54 was devastating for Khmers in the freshwater rivers region. The central contestation in that conflict was between the Viet Minh, who by 1945 had established bases along the waterways, and the French who sought to regain control of the delta following their temporary ouster in mid-1945 by the Japanese. From very early in the war, Khmers were caught in the middle as their settlements were shelled and bombed and became a battleground for troop engagements. Those who stayed to protect their homes and fields—sheltering in underground bunkers during the worst battles—were suspected of supporting the Viet Minh, while those who fled and returned to work their fields by day were accused of supporting the French and subject to reprisals. While there were both French and Viet Minh supporters among the Khmers, and quite a few Khmers nurtured independence aspirations of their own, most just wanted to live their lives in peace. However, since staying at home was too dangerous, by 1946 most had fled the warzone for nearby garrison towns under French control. The “French” war was especially destructive in the western half of this region, owing in part to the involvement in the war of the Hoa Hao. The Hoa Hao were a local millenarian Buddhist group with Vietnamese ethnonationalist aspirations, who were opposed to both the Viet Minh and the French. They controlled the larger waterways in the freshwater river zone and most of the high floodplain to the west. During the war they were active in the districts of O Mon, Co Do, Thot Not and Binh Minh. There, armed groups loyal to particular leaders clashed fiercely with Khmer residents, torching houses, ambushing river travellers, and assassinating people in their boats, homes and fields. Khmers had their own strongmen and militias who fought the Hoa Hoa in deadly feuds for microlevel territorial dominance, but they were outnumbered and were operating within a battleground concurrently contested by the Viet Minh and French armies. As the least powerful of the multiple warring parties in that conflict, Khmers were unable to hold their ground and by war’s end few Khmers were left in rural areas in the western half of the freshwater river zone.16  Many of those who abandoned their riverside villages at this time for the safety of local garrisons, cities and, in some cases, Cambodia, never returned. Those who did return home found their



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houses, orchards and fields had been occupied during their absence by local Vietnamese people aligned to either the Viet Minh or Hoa Hao or opportunists from other districts and provinces. Some were able to recuperate a small fraction of their former land, however, very often their attempts were repelled with violence and intimidation from networks of the new occupants who banded together to protect their gains. Most of the land seized from Khmers during the First Indochina War was never returned and the loss has never been recognised or compensated. The Second Indochina War, 1960–75, engulfed the region in another wave of violence. As their settlements became a war zone, returnees and remaining residents were forced to take refuge in large towns and other provinces. Many of the villages, temples, and smaller troop garrisons that had been safe during the previous war became battlegrounds in their own right. The dislocations engendered by the “American” War were most evident in the eastern parts of the freshwater zone, in Tam Binh, Tra On, Cau Ke and Ke Sach Districts and in northern Hau Giang where fewer Khmers had been dislocated in the French war. Now residents of most Khmer villages of these localities had to flee for their lives. Once again, in the interim, opportunists moved in to seize the homes, lands and temples abandoned by the Khmer war refugees. At war’s end, former residents found it extremely difficult to reclaim their land, so much so that in most Khmer villages the majority of residents never returned. The exception to these trends of land appropriation and exile was in the area to the north of the Bassac River, especially in the east, possibly owing to the greater concentration of Khmer people in those localities, or to more pro-Khmer local government action in the post-war era. The loss of land, status and local pre-eminence experienced by Khmers in this region during Vietnam’s wars for independence and national salvation are bitterly rued, as seen in this comment by a former elderly resident of Prek Sala in O Mon, himself once a middling landowner with several hectares of riverside land: In the past, Khmers owned the land in this district. We grew bananas, grapefruit, mangoes, rambutan and rice. The population was very sparse: nothing like you see today. The situation around 100 years ago was that the Khmers were the landowners and the Vietnamese worked for us. Now, the Vietnamese own all the

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land. Nothing is left in Khmer hands except our wats. Former Khmer residents work as labourers for Vietnamese bosses. They no longer even live here. They are now concentrated in the market area along the highway. Did you see the porters working in the market with dark skin? They are Khmers, the original owners of the land around here.

The wars also significantly altered the demography of this region. In the 1940s, many of the small freshwater rivers north and south of the Bassac River were predominantly Khmer-settled localities with only a handful of Viet households living along their banks. As an achar in Wat Aranyut recalled: “Before the wars the majority of people living along this three kilometre section of river were Khmers. Just a few Viets lived here and there, interspersed among Khmer houses.” And, according to another from O Mon: “The land around the O Mon River formerly was entirely Khmer. This was still the case when I was a boy in the early 1940s. I know what I am talking about because as a boy I used to accompany the monks everywhere they went.” By 1975, nearly all of these riverside localities had become majority Vietnamese-settled areas in which Khmers comprised a tiny minority. Once living in string-like settlements along the banks of rivers, in most places surviving Khmers now live concentrated around the wats where they sought protection during the French and American wars. In some places, all that remains of a Khmer village are three or four households adjacent to the wat. In others, Khmers have disappeared entirely, leaving just the wat, surrounded by an exclusively Vietnamese population.17  The greater proportion of a once mostly rural Khmer population now lives in the towns where they found refuge during the war. In some towns, like Co Do, O Mon and Ke Sach, the refugees affiliated with a pre-existing temple.18  In others, such as Can Tho, Thoi Lai, Vi Thanh and Cai Tac, new temples were built to serve the influx of Khmer refugees.19  In all of these towns Khmers today constitute a small minority of the population, and their temples and residential neighbourhoods are cramped and subject to encroachment by their urban neighbours. In these circumstances, monasteries have struggled to fulfil their traditional role as centres for communal life and cultural reproduction. The grounds of many temples in this region have been taken over by state schools, orchards and houses. Their buildings generally



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are much smaller and less well-maintained than in other parts of Kampuchea Krom. The majority of temples are supported by fewer than 150 lay households. Many are supported by considerably fewer. Ordinations are low. Only a handful of temples have more than ten monks and several have just one or two. Most temples do not conduct the daily alms round. Since the end of the wars, most have never conducted Khmer literacy, Pali and Buddhist classes. A few temples that attempted to open classes terminated them owing to the inability of the local lay community to support resident teachers and students. In several localities Khmer literacy classes were opened for children but closed for lack of interest. With a few notable exceptions in this network of once-vibrant Khmer riverside settlements, communal life has all but disintegrated, along with the capacity of local Khmer residents to transmit their language and culture to the next generation.

Refuge in the Buddha During the French and American wars, temples throughout the region served as sanctuaries for local Khmers. In many localities, residents recalled that during army sweeps, shelling and aerial bombing attacks, they left their houses and took shelter in the temple grounds. It was too dangerous to remain in their homes because the guerrilla fighters were stationed there, making the settlements the main battlegrounds. They set up temporary huts in the temple grounds where they slept at night. During the day, if it was safe, they ventured out to work in the fields. However, the sanctuary provided was not inviolate. In several instances the temples themselves came under attack or were destroyed by stray munitions and the refugees were forced to flee to another place or another temple for safety. War came to Srok Andon Russei (Bamboo Pond Village), Ke Sach in 1960, when a bomb landed on the worship hall, destroying the Buddha statue. The RVN and Americans were shelling the Viet Cong who were operating in the village. People started abandoning the village in 1963–64 as the shelling intensified. By the late 1960s, few people were left in the settlement. They dispersed to neighbouring towns and provinces. During this time, homes and properties were occupied and everything of value was stolen by “other people”. The temple itself was taken over by Vietnamese families.

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At that time, all that was left of it was the foundations. The new occupants turned the grounds into a private orchard. In the 1990s the Buddha statue was repaired. Only in 2004 was the temple again registered as a Khmer wat. However, most of the temple’s grounds remain in the hands of those Vietnamese who occupied it during the war. Today the Khmer population of this village is less than a third of pre-war levels. In several places the Buddha statue in the temple’s main worship hall is credited with keeping the refugees safe. This is the case for Wat Aranyut, by the Cho River in Hau Giang. One elderly woman recalled that during the American War, when fighting was intense, people sheltered in the temple, living temporarily within its grounds: In 1968 during the Tet Offensive, a shell was fired from Cai Tac which hit the temple. Many things were destroyed. Miraculously, none of the people sheltering in the temple was killed. The Buddha statue was hit and lost an arm and an ear. As soon as this happened, the rocket launcher in Cai Tac that had fired the shell exploded, killing the group of Republican soldiers who had fired it. That’s how powerful this Buddha statue is. You see, they knew the shell was going to land here; they knew there was a temple here, but they still fired anyway. That’s why they were punished.

Nevertheless even this un-Buddha-like retributive act was not enough to save the residents of this village who, as the shelling continued, abandoned their riverside settlement altogether. Although they could see out the war in safety in various dispersed localities, the majority have never returned. Their land was taken by Vietnamese settlers and only a small number of the original Khmer residents have been able to reclaim a fraction of what was lost. Destruction and dispersal of Khmer communities during the wars was the norm. Only a few localities escaped the wars unscathed. One such case is that of Wat Ampiwon on the banks of the Tac Rac River in Giong Rieng, on the southern fringe of the freshwater river area. During the French colonial era, it was connected to the O Mon River by canal and started to enjoy year-round freshwater conditions. The story of this temple is well known to Khmer people of the freshwater river region. The temple was built more than 100 years ago in a predominantly Khmer-settled area. Locals told me that fighting was intense



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during the French war. People came from all over the region to find refuge here. A garrison of French soldiers was stationed at the Cong Binh ferry crossing, 900 metres from the temple. I met one refugee who had fled from a neighbouring village during the French war when his own area came under heavy fire. He built a house next to the temple and made regular contributions to the temple’s upkeep. He said the altar in Wat Ampiwon has a small black Buddha statue which is very powerful: When people have problems it appears in their dreams to give them assistance. People come here to make requests of it. When your prayers are answered you must come back and offer it a monk’s red robe.

The wooden Buddha statue first appeared when it floated miraculously to the surface of the river. People spied it, pulled it to the banks of the river and built a temple to worship it. The elderly resident credited the statue with protecting the temple from war damage: During the war with France, this whole region was heavily bombed. All of the other temples in the vicinity were damaged or destroyed, with the exception of this one, because the black Buddha protected it.

The most famous protective Buddha image is in the town of Thoi Lai, on the upper reaches of the O Mon River, some 14 kilometres south of the Bassac. Thoi Lai is one of the towns to which Khmer people of O Mon District regrouped to find sanctuary during the First Indochina War. The fighting in this district between the French, Viet Minh, Hoa Hao and Khmers was particularly savage. Houses were burned, people killed, pagodas shelled and most Khmer people in the district abandoned their villages en masse. The majority of them never returned to their homes, which were occupied by others whose descendants remain there to this day. Thoi Lai was considered safe because a garrison of French troops was stationed there. It had been relatively uninhabited, but early in the war Khmers from surrounding villages moved and set up a new settlement under French protection. Thoi Lai temple was built in 1947 to serve the needs of these refugees. The temple is situated beside a busy river confluence next to a large and bustling market.

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Its grounds and buildings are small and in 2008 it was home to only six monks. But the temple receives a steady stream of visitors who come to offer prayers to the temple’s Buddha image, famous throughout O Mon District and beyond, and known to all as the Black Buddha. Locals say that the Buddha image, made of stone, is extremely responsive. Most of the pilgrims who visit the temple come with children who are “hard to raise”. These children have trouble sleeping, they wake through the night, and cry all the time. The common explanation for this is that they are troubled by ghosts. Parents bring their child before the altar to the Buddha. They pray to the Buddha, a monk ties a red thread around the child’s wrist and bestows on them a name in Pali which means that the child has become a child of the Buddha. If the child gets better, the parents must return to thank the Buddha. Sometimes they forget to do so and the Black Buddha appears to them in a dream and reminds them to return to pay thanks. People clothe the Buddha with a length of material, the same colour as a Khmer monk’s robes, to offer thanks. It accepts as gifts only red robes, not those of any other colour. Legend has it that the Buddha image appeared in miraculous circumstances. One day a Buddha statue, made of black stone with a precious gem in its forehead, floated to the water’s surface in the middle of the Bassac River. It entered the O Mon River and drifted upstream with the tide. It floated past three Khmer temples. People in each of the temples tried to invite the black statue ashore, but they were unsuccessful. When it drifted past this temple the locals also requested the statue to come ashore and this time it acquiesced, coming ashore at the temple, where it was enshrined. Locals surmise that there must be something sacred about their locality for the Buddha statue to have chosen their temple as the place to be worshipped. A fascinating aspect to this story is that the route taken by the Buddha statue on the way to its place of rest follows the route taken by Khmer war refugees who found sanctuary in Thoi Lai. The temples along the O Mon River that it drifted past were situated in Khmer villages that were decimated by the war. Many of the people fleeing these riverside villages travelled upstream by boat, ending up in Thoi Lai where their descendants still work as porters and petty traders in the market. Only a handful of Khmer people still live in each of these original villages today and their temples still are in



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disrepair. The tale has the compelling implication that the Buddha detached itself from villages vacated during the First Indochina War, making its way in determined manner to the place in which those village residents found refuge, providing refuge to them anew. Just as intriguingly, pilgrims to this shrine largely come from within the region most affected by the war. Their journeys to this upstream shrine trace the lines of flight once taken by Khmer war refugees. However, most curiously, these pilgrims are nearly all Vietnamese. Monks and those who serve the pilgrimage trade say that it is Vietnamese who most commonly ask the Black Buddha to become the spiritual protector of their children. Khmer people observe that in many cases the people who seek the Buddha’s assistance are the very people who dispossessed the Khmers of their homes and lands during the wars. Today, encountering persistent trouble raising infants in homes and lands that once belonged to Khmer people, parents come to the new abode of those they have displaced seeking to make the Black Buddha a spiritual father to their troubled children. This is subtle karmic justice and represents a tacit acknowledgement of the spiritual authority still held by the Khmers over lands from which they have been dispossessed. At a more profound level, the route taken by the Buddha image from the Bassac River to this Khmer refugee settlement at the headwaters of the O Mon River coincides with that followed by Khmers over the course of hundreds of years. As local oral histories throughout the freshwater river region contend, Khmers were chased from settlements on the big river, finding refuge along the banks of smaller watercourses. Resettling then abandoning riverside settlements often several times, Khmers moved further and further upstream to the point where now their villages are found only along the smallest and most obscure watercourses. The Indochina wars added another chapter of dislocation, threatening many of these riverside localities with oblivion. Stories of these ancient and modern displacements are entirely absent in Vietnamese secular histories. However, in ritual practices such as those associated with the Black Buddha of Thoi Lai we see the historical experience of the Khmers of the freshwater river region resonating faintly in the spiritual life of the Vietnamese who displaced them. It is, nevertheless, significant that these supplicants seek spiritual protection from a Khmer image that has been dislocated and entirely decontextualised from the religious culture of those who produced it.

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The disturbing implication is that Khmer power can be recognised only when living Khmer communities have been destroyed or rendered impotent. A somewhat more positive form of intercultural interaction is found north of the Bassac where Khmer riverside communities survived the wars in better shape. In various sites in Vinh Long I found self-identifying Viet people who were enthusiastic about attending Khmer temple festivals in their locality.20  Khmer achars in several temples in Vinh Long told me that ethnic Viets were major contributors to the upkeep of their temple, typically donating a large amount of money in a single gesture, as opposed to the regular small contributions of money, labour and food characteristic of Khmer donations. One spectacular bequest was made by a wealthy Chinese woman from Ho Chi Minh City who, when she was diagnosed with a fatal illness, donated a Buddha relic to Wat Polthisomrong beside the O Mon River.21  Another was arranged by a Vietnamese-Australian Buddhist who mobilised a huge amount of money to rebuild Wat Pitu Khosa Rangsay, formerly a small and beleaguered Khmer war-refugee temple in Can Tho City. The task of rebuilding war-ravaged Khmer communities has been shouldered by Khmer people themselves. In villages and temples shattered by war and post-war dispossession, local abbots have networked strenuously to raise funds, rebuild temples, encourage ordinations and re-establish Pali and Khmer literacy classes. A good deal of this networking has come from within the freshwater rivers region itself. The abbot of Wat Polthisomrong in O Mon, for example, raised funds and recruited teachers for a Khmer school in nearby Wat Neryvone. Similarly, monks from Wat Ampiwon in Giong Rieng came to Dinh Mon in O Mon to rebuild a temple that had been destroyed during the war and had no resident monks. A monk from Wat Ampiwon in O Mon re-introduced monks to Wat Aranyut in Hau Giang, became its abbot and established a Khmer and Pali class. Monks from a number of temples in Vinh Long have crossed the Bassac to serve as abbots and teachers in several severely war-damaged temples in Hau Giang.22  The learned abbot of Wat Munirangsay also crossed the Bassac from his home temple in Cau Ke to continue his studies and serve as a teacher. The abbots of Wat Polthisomrong and Wat Sanvor lobbied the government and mobilised funds, labour and teachers to establish, in 2007, a Khmer Theravada Buddhist Institute in O Mon.23  The institute, with campuses in both temples, attracts monks from



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various Mekong Delta provinces who study for four years at postsecondary level subjects such as Khmer literature, Pali, Buddhism and philosophy. As the first Khmer Buddhist Institute in Vietnam, the initiative received critical appraisal from Vietnam’s Khmer sangha. Many would have preferred the government to devote more resources to the project, allowing it to be situated in a large city with access to better learning and teaching resources, rather than in a remote rural area. Another irony of situating this high level institute in this locality is that the local Khmer population has been so dispersed and decimated by the wars that their capacity to support and benefit from the institute is severely attenuated. Nevertheless, elderly war refugees in O Mon threw themselves into building the institute and secured donations from former residents now living as far away as Canada and the US. And a high proportion of its teachers and students come from within the freshwater region. The patterns of movement and exchange of those involved in these monastic rebuilding efforts bring into relief the sinews that join a unique Khmer region. Travelling along the waterways that connect this region, abbots have incrementally rebuilt the riverside temples that once served as nodes for its Khmer communities and culture. This region’s coherence has been diminished by being overlaid by modern provincial divisions and written into Vietnam-centric histories that obscure its Khmer identity. Its visibility and vitality as a Khmer-settled region also have been diminished because it was a central theatre in two brutal wars that turned the majority of its Khmer residents into homeless and landless refugees. In most places, the temples that are being rebuilt lack significant numbers of Khmer people as affiliates and supporters. They are surrounded by Vietnamese-speakers who have little interest in the outcome of the monastic revitalisation project. The question that remains is whether this restorative activity will be enough to resecure Khmer people’s tenure in this war-ravaged region and raise awareness of the central Mekong Delta’s historical status as a once-robust and distinctive centre of Khmer culture.

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4 Saltwater Rivers: Sovereign Nature and Tidal History in a Khmer River Basin South of the Bassac River a tongue of alluvial clay has been sculpted by oceanic currents into a flat tapered peninsula. The Ca Mau Peninsula comprises the lowest land in the Mekong Delta. Most of it is only barely above sea level.1  The peninsula has the highest precipitation levels in the Mekong Delta, receiving on average more than two metres of rain per year. Its rainy season is also the longest, lasting nearly nine months (Vo and Matsui 1998: 27). Each year, the peninsula receives floodwaters from the Bassac via streams that radiate from its right bank. Until recently much of this landform was permanently inundated. Rimmed by sea and strongly tidal, the water that accumulates on the peninsula is stained dark with tannins that have leached from the trees of its submerged melaleuca forests. This is a likely reason for the Khmer name for this region, Tuk Khmau, or black water. Local rivers allow water to exit the peninsula. One of these, the Peam Chan (Song Co Co), winds through the coastal dune belt of the eastern delta into the South China Sea.2  The largest rivers flow westward. They include the Trem and Ong Doc that circumscribe the U Minh forest and the Bay Hop and Cua Lon that drain the southern tip of the peninsula. The most significant of these rivers, the Prek Thom (Cai Lon or Big River), has tributaries that reach 100 kilometres across the upper peninsula. They converge and empty into the Gulf of Thailand just south of Rach Gia. Although these rivers drain surface water off the peninsula, they also permit salt 128



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water to enter from the Gulf of Thailand. During the dry season, salt water courses up their channels and enters the marshes and submerged forests of their basins. For this reason elderly Khmer residents sometimes refer to them as saltwater rivers or prek tuk pray. These rivers are the basis for a unique Khmer settlement zone that I refer to as the saltwater river region (see Map 1). Spanning parts of Ca Mau, Kien Giang, Hau Giang, Soc Trang and Bac Lieu, provinces, this region is the same size as all the other Khmer population zones of the lower delta combined, with less than one fifth of the total actively identifying Khmer population. Approximately 80 wat-centred villages line the rivers that flow west off the peninsula. The Khmer population is distributed along the banks of the small winding tributaries that feed into permanently brackish estuaries. All but a handful of these villages are situated along tributaries of the Prek Thom. Half of them concentrated in the downstream reaches of this river system in eastern Kien Giang, or Kramuon Sor. The Khmers of this region have adapted to the challenges of living in a seasonally saline river environment by developing unique livelihood strategies, technological innovations, and patterns of communication and community. Their locally contextualised cosmologies emphasise their proximity to water and their interactions with a variety of non-human species. From the mid-twentieth century these riverside communities were impacted by wars, national development policies and profound economic and environmental changes that rendered unstable a pre-existing way of life. While participating in these historical transformations as key environmental agents, many local Khmers also experienced displacement and assimilation. However, the direction and permanence of these changes are called into question in stories told by residents about persistently resurfacing animals, objects and royal artefacts. These tales about a past that resists submergence embody a unique form of historical consciousness and bring into view conceptions of place, morality and authority that remain salient for the Khmers of this region of saltwater rivers.

Cosmogony and Nature Local legends enable one to sketch a folkloric history of the saltwater river region. Some stories relate that animals created the lands and waters upon which humans have come to depend. Sophan told me one story about the origins of land:

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I learned in Pali classes that long ago, the land was no more than a small piece of earth floating in the ocean. It had no feet (cheurn); it was floating on water. Some grass grew on the earth and it was also home to a mouse. The mouse ate the grass and when it excreted, the piece of earth grew larger as a result. Each time the mouse excreted, the area of land grew a little bigger. In time, the land became home to many creatures such as snakes and turtles. Plants and trees grew, which the animals also ate. Gradually the land expanded; it also increased in height and the sea became less and less.3 

Some tales relate that animals also formed the waterways. Elderly people in the vicinity of Wat Ampiwon [Mango Jungle Temple], Giong Rieng, told me: In the past, this area was all jungle. There were many tigers and other wild animals and no people. But there were not many rivers. The river running past this house was a path used by tigers, elephants and buffalo to walk through the jungle. Over time, these animals created a depression where they walked which filled with water and became this river. As late as 1995, it was still very narrow. It had not yet been widened.

Even after humans settled in the region, wild animals continued to use the routes they had fashioned. The abbot of Wat Prek Sala said the name of his own temple is usually thought to mean Areca River Temple.4  However, according to what he has been told, it really should be Piek Klaa: Tiger River. In this location lived a tiger that people noticed would always swim across the river in the same place. The name Tiger River Temple was given to the wat to record this occurrence. This abbot said that a nearby temple, Wat Duong Xuong [Boat Road Temple], is named after a road originally created by buffaloes as they walked through the forest. It became a river when it filled in with water. Boats passing along it would encounter many buffalo still using their old route. That is why it has the name boat road. In tales related by its Khmer residents the struggle with wild animals (sat prey) loomed large. According to laypeople at Wat Ampiwon: The first people to settle here cleared the forest and built a temple. This area is called Chi Kapoe—it means high tower or



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high victory. It is named after the fortress built by the first resident, an old man, who built a fort to protect himself and his orchard from the tigers. No one remembers his name. It was long ago.

These stories delineate the risks faced by humans who moved in a world dominated by animals. Elderly achars at Wat Kompong Krobei [Buffalo Landing Temple] in Go Quao said their temple had been built some 400 years ago, but in a different location: At that time, this region was full of tigers. This wat was relocated to this site 300 years ago, following a tiger attack at its previous site. A tiger entered the wat and attacked the Buddha statue, thinking it to be a sitting human. It broke the Buddha statue’s neck.

Co-mingling with these creatures in their natural habitat exposed people to conceptual confusion and ethical dilemmas. Narin, a museum worker in Soc Trang, related a story about the dangers faced by women in a world full of wild animals: Long ago in Tuk Khmau, a woman was wandering through the forest. A monkey ( sva) captured her and made her his wife. They gave birth to a child who was half monkey, half human. Then some traders came through the area and discovered the woman. They rescued her, leaving the child behind. The monkey was so angry that his wife had been taken that he took their child and tore it in two.

The waterways were also home to crocodiles and Khmer residents have many stories about human encounters with these creatures. As the stories relate, these denizens of the waterways are observed to act in highly ritualised ways, maintaining forms of sociality that parallel those of humans. Ly Tai, a monk from Wat Ampiwon, told me of a place in Chau Thanh, Kien Giang called Prek Kropeu Hael— Swimming Crocodile Stream. It is said that each month at midnight on the night of the full moon, many crocodiles gather at that place to swim. Crocodiles live in a world of their own, variously seen as nocturnal, subterranean or invisible, but are capable of religious vocations recognisable to humans. Sophan related one example:

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The Khmer Lands of Vietnam ? In the commune of  Tô˜ng Quan, Go Quao, two crocodiles live in a cave under the shrine to a neak ta spirit. They have ordained. Not as Buddhists. They follow the neak ta. Normally they are invisible, but you can see them if you bring an offering of bananas or a chicken to the shrine. An elderly couple heard about the crocodiles and asked to see them. They had never seen a crocodile and wanted to do so just once before they died. They went to the shrine with their offerings. When the crocodiles surfaced the two elderly people were so terrified that they died on the spot.5 

In some tales, crocodiles act as harbingers or messengers and interact with humans. As one tale relates, people may read great significance into such interactions: In Giong Rieng, a crocodile once followed a monk who was returning to his temple in a motorised speedboat. The crocodiles chased him for five kilometres, staying abreast of the speeding boat the entire way home. When he reached his temple the monk reflected on the meaning of this occurrence. He had been contemplating disrobing but took the behaviour of the crocodile as a sign that he not disrobe, and so he instead remained ordained.

These creatures have a passion for participating in human religious life that at times has had disruptive consequences. In Bac Lieu Province, people tell a story about a crocodile that dug a cavern into the bank of the river right under the preah vihear or main worship hall of a temple, causing it to collapse: Long ago when the preah vihear was being built, one morning just after the columns were cast and the foundation laid, the ground subsided in the main hall and people discovered a very deep cavern. At that time no one dared go down the hole. Late in the evening, just on dark, they saw a crocodile poking its head out of the cavern. Since then, people have called this place Wat Kabal Kropeu or Crocodile Head Temple.6 

One story relates the visitation of a strange creature that took place at the founding of Wat Kairon, in Long My, Hau Giang: Long ago when this temple was being built, a tiger came to stay and slept in it. This tiger was strange looking. It had scales like



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a dragon with a tail and body trunk like those of a dragon. It never harmed anyone. After a time it died in the temple. Since then the people call the temple Kai Ron [dragon].7 

These tales contain a set of meditations upon the agency of animals in a region whose human denizens do not consider themselves to be the dominant actors. Animals are world makers, creating the land and river routes upon which human life depends. People tread in their footsteps and encounter them on their travels. The animals live alongside humans in a parallel and mysterious world. The line between the two worlds is often breached in attacks, marriages, or efforts at communication. Usually it is animals that initiate such transgressions. The results usually are disastrous and humans act to reassert their separateness. However, the work of distinction is continuous and its fruits always precarious. Projects of religious selfcultivation are especially attractive to animals, who invade the sites where such activities take place, disrupting efforts by humans to delineate a realm of their own. Humans navigate a watery world populated by spiritual predecessors. Among the most feared are water ghosts, khmuich tuk, which infest the waterways of this region, especially deserted river stretches and abandoned canals. Sophan explained that a water ghost is the soul of a drowning victim: The khmuich tuk lives under the water. It kills people by dragging them into the water. Only by dragging someone to their death can it escape from its watery grave. It can even drag down someone who is walking along the banks of the canal by pulling their spirit out of their body. It does not take much for them to kill you. All that is needed is a puddle of water no bigger than the dish of water that a dog drinks from. If your face alone is submerged you can die. People don’t make offerings to it—they hate it.

He recounted a close brush with one of these dreaded beings: Near my home is a canal where, for sure people have died. A khmuich tuk lives there, a creature shaped like a toad, but bigger, and its skin is black and slimy like a snail, with bumps like a toad. I know this. I saw it once. I was bathing in the canal with three or four of my friends. It was around noon. I heard the khmuich tuk calling me. It makes no sound—you can just sense

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it. The khmuich tuk surfaced near me. My friends had left the water by then. They wanted to help me but were too scared to re-enter the canal. But I escaped. I was just 14 and it was not my fate to die at that time.

Fear of water ghosts is widespread among both Khmers and Vietnamese.8  In a region where life is centred upon waterways, such beliefs inculcate an extreme precautionary attitude towards water. Water ghosts, like crocodiles and tigers of times past, remind people of the limits of human sovereignty over riverine domains. A drowning also directs attention to the presence and agency of one’s spiritual predecessors. Local folklore posits that humans have long left their mark on this region of rivers. In the stories told by its Khmer residents the Ca Mau Peninsula is a site of longstanding Khmer residence that has been subject to multiple waves of influence. Particular significance is given to sites on the peninsula that are believed to date to Angkorian or pre-Angkorian times. For example, Can Den, in the district of Vinh Thuan, Kien Giang is believed to be the site of an Angkor era royal installation. A senior abbot from that province affirmed: At the border of the provinces of Kien Giang, Soc Trang and Bac Lieu is a site called Prasat Thnol Mui Roi—One Hundred Paths to the Palace. All that is left there is a platform made of stone, the kind of stone that is quarried from the mountains of the western delta. It was the place to which people came in order to make offerings to the Khmer king when he undertook tours of inspection. People came here from all points, hence the name One Hundred Paths.

The term One Hundred Paths evokes the multitude of natural waterways that ensnarl this part of the peninsula and function to this day as transport conduits. A local abbot said it is called Prasat Pram Louvang. “From here a road led all the way to Angkor. It was built in the time of Angkor. From Angkor, another road led to Thailand, and another one to Champa.” Another monk from the vicinity asserted that it was the place where the king was enthroned: This was a long time ago. He was king of Cambodia or king of O Keo.9  It is a stone platform that has sunk into the earth. There must have been other structures around it in the past — other buildings associated with the king—but they have sunk into the earth or may have been stolen during the war.



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Sometimes after spending a very long time submerged, a stone will rise to the surface. In the forecourt of Wat Klaing Muon is a small shrine to a hermit (ta eisey). The large stone plinth on which it stands is flat and square. It looks very much like a Yoni stone, with a hole in the middle obscured by the statue of the hermit that rests atop it. Luk Ri, a resident monk, said the stone plinth is very old. “An archaeologist came here and estimated it to be more than 1,000 years old. It is a kind of precious black stone that one rarely sees. It is very powerful. People come to make requests of it all of the time. They leave an offering of bananas or fruit in gratitude, so you know it is powerful.” According to an elderly man in the temple: The rectangular stone was discovered only six or seven years ago. I am 75 years old and I never saw it previously. My parents never saw it either. One day, it just floated up from out of the earth [ phos learng pi knong dei] of its own accord where people discovered it. They placed it in the shrine in the grounds of the temple. No one knows where it came from, or when it was made.10 

For many, these vestiges and names that recall royal sites and travels are taken as confirmation that the region once was part of the Khmer empire. The port city of Rach Gia lies at the mouth of the Prek Thom river system that drains the northern peninsula. Local Khmer monks said that the name Rach Gia is a Vietnamised rendition of Psar Reachea, meaning Royal Market. It was the seat of the pre-Vietnamese Khmer administrative entity of Kramuon Sor. Indeed, the Cambodian chronicles record that Khmer kings re-appointed governors in Kramoun Sor on two occasions, in the early 1600s and again in the late 1600s (Mak Phoeun 1995: 110, 395). Khmers living on the peninsula are inclined to explore migratory narratives, although these are speculative in nature. One posited vector of Khmer migration is up the Prek Thom river system, from west to east. Using the establishment dates of temples as a cue, they speculate on a 600-year-old process of Khmer colonisation of this river basin. The temples in Rach Gia City, nearest the river’s mouth on the Gulf of Thailand, were established the earliest. Wat Lang Cat in present-day Rach Gia City is believed by its resident monks to have been founded in the early 1400s. Its near neighbour, Wat Uttunmanjeay, is thought to have been founded around 1500. Ten wats in the midstream districts of Chau Thanh and Go Quao are

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said by their respective elderly caretakers to have been founded before 1700. Just three wats in the upstream reaches of Long My in Hau Giang and Ngan Dua in Bac Lieu were, according to local memory, founded before 1700. These temple founding dates are based on local knowledge and have not been independently verified. Locals point out that Khmer settlement usually would have preceded the founding of temples. Nevertheless, the generally west-to-east sequence of temple founding dates presents an intriguing migratory scenario. Khmer people living in the southern part of the peninsula thought that Khmers had migrated to their region from the eastern coast of the delta. A senior monk in Wat Krobei Kleac [White Buffalo Temple] just north of Ca Mau City said that hundreds of years ago the U Minh forest stretched as far as his settlement. Few people lived there then. The land was covered by forest and swamp and was full of wild animals. Gradually the land emerged and people began to settle there, most likely from much older Khmer settlements in Preah Trapeang [present-day Tra Vinh]. Based on the founding dates of the six Khmer temples that remain in Ca Mau Province, he thought Khmers had lived on the peninsula for up to 500 years. Several place names in Kien Giang suggest visitations by the Siamese. One of them is Wat Srey Siem, or Siamese Rice Fields Temple in An Bien District. A local abbot said the name indicates that there were rice fields in that locality that used to be owned by Siamese. A second temple with Siamese links is Wat Tram Chet in Giong Rieng District. A young monk in the district said that the Khmer name for the temple is Siem Chot. It means Siamese landing. An elderly man in Wat Tomlaithon Khlaing Muon elaborated: “In the wars between Siam and Cambodia, Siam and Vietnam, the Siamese navy landed there and the troops disembarked. It was a battlefield in the war.” Wat Tomlaithon Khlaing Muon itself is named after a Khmer hero of Cambodia’s wars against Siam. The elderly man said the temple was given its name by the Cambodian king a long time ago. Another place name that references resistance battles, albeit with an unknown enemy, is Wat Chac Bang [Nipa Palm Screen Temple] in Vinh Thuan. A senior abbot told me a story associated with this name. “In the past when a Khmer general was fighting the enemy, he would always retreat to this place and the water coconut palms would draw together behind him in a screen so that the enemy could not find where he was hiding.”



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Other place names suggest the historic presence of Chinese entrepots. The temple in Chau Thanh known today as Wat Cu La is known to elderly Khmer locals as Wat Kompong Chanh. The name means Chinese Landing Temple. It is named thus because in the past, a group of Chinese used to live there. The Ca Mau Peninsula is known to have been a place of Chinese trade and migration (Cooke and Li 2004). Khmers in this region often acknowledge their mixed Chinese-Khmer heritage. The Vietnamese, it seems, arrived much later. In some oral accounts by Khmers their arrival on the peninsula dates to the land-opening and development policies initiated by the French. As the French dug canals, Vietnamese came by boats along the canals settling along their banks made of silt thrown up by the mechanical dredges. These accounts give credit to the French in facilitating the Vietnamese colonisation of the peninsula. However, Viets were not the sole beneficiaries of these swamp draining and canal building projects. Khmers too were enticed to settle along canals that extended, straightened and deepened natural waterways. Khmers live along canals that were constructed in the colonial era in places such as Giong Rieng and in Hau Giang.11  After the end of the Vietnam Wars, these irrigation projects were dramatically expanded to the point that the entire peninsula became encased in a grid of canals and protected by sluice gates from saline incursions. Before moving to describe these transformations, however, I first reconstruct a picture of life on the peninsula from the mid-twentieth century on, based on discussions with its elderly Khmer residents.

Making a Life on the Saltwater Rivers Rivers are central to life on the Ca Mau Peninsula. Without them, Khmers would have been unable to live in this inundated region. One of the major constraints to settlement is the absence of high and dry places. As Aymonier noted in the late nineteenth century, the rivers that drain surface water from the peninsula also provide the main basis for local residence (Aymonier 1900: 143). Their banks, formed by deposits of fine clay (dei et), were once the only points to remain above water year round. Elderly Khmer residents report that their ancestors made the most of this feature by building their houses along the narrow clay river levees. But the natural height

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Plate 4.1 Riverside residences, Giong Rieng

advantage provided by the banks is marginal, mostly only a few centimetres above the high water level. Thus, considerable effort has been devoted to supplementing the banks and rendering them more secure for human residence. Most houses are made using materials procured from the waterways. They stand on a platform of clay that has been dredged from the beds of the rivers by hand, heaped upon the banks and stamped flat. The walls and roofs are of water coconut palm fronds taken from the river. They are suspended on a frame of paperbark poles harvested from the swamps. Forecourts, which are used for processing, storage, boat repairs and socialising, are made by piling river silt behind a retaining wall of stacked coconut trunks. Settlement stretches in a string along the riverbank, houses facing the river, fields to the rear (Plate 4.1). Children build houses alongside those of their parents. Sometimes several houses are enclosed within a bamboo hedge, creating an extended-family compound. Rivers traditionally provided most of the fresh water consumed by Khmer households. Until the mid-1990s, water for drinking,



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cooking and washing was taken directly from the rivers and flooded fields. However, in the dry season, the rivers would run salty for several months a year. Even their upstream reaches ran brackish several months each year.12  Various measures were adopted to cope with the seasonal scarcity of fresh water. Ponds (andon) were used to harvest rainwater and store it for use during the dry season. These needed to be dug well away from the river to minimise the infiltration of salt water from the river channel. Because the groundwater is both salty ( pray) and acidic (choo), the ponds also needed to be located in areas where the soil was impermeable clay, which prevented the groundwater seeping in. Neighbours collaborated to dig these ponds, owing to the hardness of the clay soil and the scarcity of suitable sites. Nevertheless, these neighbourhood ponds routinely became contaminated in the saltwater season. Common supplementary measures included storing rainwater in a set of glazed clay jars, constructing above-ground rainwater reservoirs, or buying water from travelling water sellers. However, for most households they were too costly to serve as a dry-season staple. Ironically for such an inundated region, freshwater shortages were a perennial problem, and became most critical in April, just before the rains recommenced. Aquatic life thrives in the saline-freshwater interface of this region and to this day a great variety of netting and trapping methods are used to harvest it. Plunge nets are suspended from a bamboo frame above the surface of a waterway and are levered into the water to scoop up passing fish. Nets strung along the edges of a waterway create a fish channel that becomes a trap when the tide subsides. Woven bamboo traps of various kinds are lowered to the river bed for catching fish, shrimp, crabs and eels. People forage along the banks of waterways and levees, spearing rats and collecting snails, frogs and freshwater crabs. Most households raise at least a few ducks, which are easily fed on a rich diet of aquatic animals and vegetation. Large flocks of ducks roam the waterways and flooded fields and at night are penned in nets. The exploitation of aquatic resources is a localised activity that usually takes place close to home. Despite the expanses of water around them, it is rare for Khmer people in this region to undertake extended fishing journeys. Before much of the basin was cleared for rice fields in the early twentieth century, it was heavily forested and livelihoods were based substantially on harvesting and processing forest resources. Hardwoods and wild fruit trees grew upstream. Paperbark trees, bamboo

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and water coconut palms grew in the brackish mid-reaches. Rushes and mangroves were prevalent near the coast.13  These forest resources are still exploited for boat building, house construction, mat and trap making, and charcoal production. Honey was collected from the hives of wild bees and the hives were boiled to extract wax. The Khmer name for the greater Prek Thom river basin, Kramoun Sor, meaning white wax, likely derives from this industry.14  Once, vast flocks of wild birds were hunted with nets, slingshots and later with guns. Until the late 1970s, the region yielded one rice crop per year. Seasonal rice srau r’dau, was sown after the early rains had flushed out the saline water and was harvested half a year later, after the floods subsided. Water buffaloes (krobei ) were critical in putting this waterlogged region under rice cultivation. The buffalo is well adapted to sodden conditions: its wide hooves allow it to move through the mud more easily than a cow. Accounting for the relative absence of cows in this watery region, one Khmer resident observed that the buffalo is made of a wax-like substance, which only hardens when immersed in water. The cow is like earth, which dissolves when exposed to water. Because the buffalo can be used to till the fields while they are inundated, it enabled people to wait until sufficient rainwater had accumulated to drive out the saline water before sowing their rice. This task had to be done quickly, so the greater the number of buffaloes one used, the more rice one could grow. If one owned a large herd of buffaloes, one could rent them to others. Hence, in the past, the size of a buffalo herd was a common means of determining if a family was well off. With life and work centred around waterways, the boat is key to Khmer livelihoods and sociality in this region. Almost every Khmer household has a private jetty and a small wooden rowboat. These boats are used for visiting the fields, inspecting nets, herding ducks, fishing in the streams and collecting in the swamps. They are used by all family members to paddle from their home to the wat, the school and the market. Rowboats once were used to ferry home water from communal rainwater storage ponds in the dry season. Residents of downstream settlements would often row as far as 20 kilometres upstream in search of fresher water. These allpurpose vessels continue to be used to transport silt scooped from the riverbed to the river’s edge, in order to create platforms for residences and gardens.



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Whereas transport modernisation elsewhere has entailed sealing roads and motorisation of land-based wheeled vehicles, here, it has meant the extension of canals and mechanisation of boats. Most ubiquitous is the long-tailed motorboat, tuuk masin, which can seat up to four passengers and is also used for transporting goods. The engine, driveshaft and propeller of these slender speedboats are on a single detachable chassis, mounted on the stern. The propeller chassis swivels in its mount so that the boat can execute sharp turns through winding waterways at high speeds. The propeller can be raised out of the water while the engine is still running to prevent the blades fouling on clumps of floating water hyacinth. Khmer people of means began using motorised boats in 1963.15  Becoming more popular in the early 1990s, today nearly every Khmer farming family owns one. The boats are garaged in their own huts of water coconut leaves to prevent the hulls from filling with rainwater. The boat’s propeller unit is also used as an agricultural accessory to pump water from the flooded fields.16  Like the buffalo that allow fields to be tilled while they are still soggy, the propeller pump has allowed farmers to drain their rice fields in preparation for planting up to a month before the water would naturally ebb away, and has facilitated the introduction of a spring rice crop and of new short high-yield rice varieties. Boats are the primary means by which Khmer riverside dwellers have articulated with the wider economy, albeit rarely as owners of the larger means of transportation. As the principal thoroughfares for trans-regional trade and transport, the waterways of the Ca Mau Peninsula bustle with cargo and passenger craft of all descriptions. Until the late 1970s, water freighters would ply the waterways each dry season, selling drinking water that had been drawn from freshwater rivers to the north. Rice and fruit produced by Khmers in this region are still transported by boat, as are many of the items they consume, from fuel and construction materials, to clothes and processed food. A common sight in Khmer riverine neighbourhoods is mobile smallgoods traders, who slowly motor from house to house selling merchandise from their boats. Waterborne commerce in this region long has been dominated by specialist minorities, from Cham Muslim clothing sellers to Chinese rice transporters and passenger services. As riverside dwellers, Khmers have been able to benefit from a wide variety of waterborne services. However, few participate in such lucrative ventures as grocery selling or, in the past, the

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Plate 4.2 River craft, Go Quao

regional water trade. Nor is it common for Khmers to either own or operate the large long-distance passenger and cargo vessels that pass so regularly through their riverside neighbourhoods (Plate 4.2).

Pooling Resources and Creating Community Particularly intriguing in the context of this mobile, communicatively open and multicultural riverine environment is the strong identification of so many of its residents as Khmers. In this, the Theravada wat has played a key role. As a locus for pooling labour and natural resources, wats co-ordinated communal responses to ecological challenges that households acting alone would have been hard-pressed to meet. These activities have been informed by and in turn have reinforced a belief in the wat’s importance as a centre for cultural, spiritual and cosmological renewal. Wats traditionally were educational centres of the Khmer agrarian communities of the saltwater river region. Each wat had a school. They were, until very recently, the only schools in the vicinity of



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most Khmer settlements in this region. In them, local children learned Khmer literacy and some maths. Elderly achars in Wat Kro Nhum estimated that in 1950, some 70 per cent of local youths ordained. “It was the only way to get an education”, an achar explained to me. Local wats served as stepping stones to advanced studies in Khmer literacy, Pali and Buddhism in schools outside the region. As teachers returned from studies in the eastern delta and Cambodia, they brought back to the riverside settlements influential models and conceptions of their place in a wider Khmer-speaking world. Temples are the traditional sites for life-cycle rituals and facilitate the passage of community affiliates through a series of critical life junctures and statuses. Wats also stage an intensive round of seasonal festivals that ritually manage transitions of significance for agrarian communities, such as the commencement and cessation of the rains and the transition between freshwater and brackish water seasons. Chol chnam thmei, the Khmer New Year, falls in April, just prior to the onset of the rainy season. Ceremonies are held at the commencement and cessation of the three-month monastic retreat of vossa that coincides with the annual rains. The ancestral festival of bon donta occurs toward the end of the rains. The most effervescent of these festivals, the ok omboc boat racing festival, is held in November, when the flooded rivers are at their highest and when traditionally the water in them was at its freshest. Wats occupy the highest land of all in this inundated region. Elderly men in Wat Khlang Ong, Kien Giang explained: This is not just about the choice of a site on naturally elevated land. The main reason is that the community gets together to build up a platform on which to build the wat. A retaining wall of logs, now cement, was hammered into the ground to form a perimeter and then the silt from the river was piled inside, creating a platform higher than the surrounding land. This allowed the wat to be built above the water level. Stilts elevated the key wat building even higher.

These physically elevated sites, surrounded by water, are modelled on Mount Sumeru, the cosmic pivot. The mobilisation of labour to build up these institutions is informed by a spiritual imperative. During the New Year, laypersons bring loads of fresh river silt to the wat and heap it into miniature replicas of the sacred mountain. By

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Plate 4.3 Wat Kompong Krobei, Go Quao

doing this, they make merit to transfer to their ancestors or parents, or to recover from a sickness of the soul. When the festival is over, the multitude of mountains is demolished and the soil spread out over the temple grounds. Over time, the contribution of this rite to the elevation of the grounds has been considerable, since each household traditionally offered silt to the wat at New Year. Another critical function of the wat in this region was as a communal freshwater reservoir. As noted, neighbourhood rainwater harvesting ponds often became contaminated with salt during the brackish water season. Alternative water-buying and collecting measures were inaccessible to the majority of poor households. Collectively dug rainwater-holding ponds located in temple grounds were thus a crucial communal drinking source. Called sras or andon interchangeably in this region, temple ponds usually were the largest freshwater reservoirs in a village. Although they were dug for the use of the monastic community, most householders affiliated to a wat relied on these ponds as a dry-season water source of last resort.



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Laypeople came to the temple each day to draw water for their own use or to water their livestock. The ponds in the grounds of wats were considered to have better quality water than other ponds for a number of reasons. Because the ground into which they were sunk was artificially higher than the surrounding land, the harvested rainwater that they stored was less likely to be contaminated by the seepage of saline groundwater than the water in ordinary communal ponds. Also being on higher ground, these ponds were protected from flood spillage. Additionally, people would take great care to maintain the purity of the water. In some temples, fishing nets were strung across the surface of the pond to prevent refuse or organic matter falling in and contaminating it. Showering and washing stations were set up at some distance from the source. Bathing in drinking pond water was not allowed. Elderly achars in Wat Prek Chek [Nipa Palm River Temple], Nga Nam, described the regime in place in their youth: The purity of the water in the temple andon was fiercely guarded. People transferred water from the pond into containers located away from the pond to use for various purposes. Laypeople also watered their buffaloes from the pond during the dry months but we carted the water to drinking troughs placed well away from it so that the buffaloes would not foul the pond water.

Sophan said that lotus lilies were planted in the temple ponds to symbolise the origins of Buddhism, something pure and beautiful rising out of the mud. They also improved the quality of the water. He observed: People plant lotus lilies in ponds because they sweeten the water and make it pure. Water in which lotus lilies are growing is always fresher, cooler and purer than a pond in which none are growing. The water from a temple pond is special. It makes you feel cool and healthy. It is wonderful, he said, with a shiver of delight.

Sharing water also created bonds of community: Drinking water from the same source creates a spirit of unity among villagers. People who drink water from the same source have the same water flowing in the blood in their veins. They are made of the same substance. The water from the sras is like

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milk that flows from a mother’s breasts. All who share it are brothers and sisters, like those raised by the same mother. And digging it together, people make merit together. All share in the merit from digging it.

These communal institutions rely for their very existence and functioning on boats. For instance, boats were used to create an elevated platform for temple grounds and buildings. The silt in the grounds of Wat Kompong Krobei had been transferred laboriously from the riverbed by boat, according to elderly laypersons: Laypersons would scoop out the soft silt from the bottom of the river and pile it into their boats. They would paddle their boats to the temple to dump it there. Little by little, over the course of many years, the grounds rose. After 1975 mechanical excavators and pump dredges were used for this purpose. The rate of elevation was higher than in the past when all silt donated to the temple was brought by boat.

The functioning of the temple as a communal water source also depended critically on boats. During the dry season, householders throughout this river system would paddle their boats to their local temple to fetch drinking water from its pond. Pon, a layperson affiliated to Wat Kvai To Tung, east of Minh Luong described watergathering practices in his youth in the mid-1980s: The village where I grew up is on a stream. Salt water intruded for about two months each year. During these months, the villagers, about 300 families in all, came to draw water from the sras in the temple grounds. I did this every day when I was young. My house is 500 metres from the temple. I would travel there each day by wooden rowboat and scoop up water from the sras using plastic buckets and row home with them.

Boats were also used to provision temples with fresh water. In the 1960s, during the months when their stretch of the river ran salty, laypersons in Wat Prek Chek used their boats to fetch water from Bun Tao, a place upstream where the water remained fresh. They would bring it back to fill a reservoir in their temple for use by monks, lay visitors and neighbours. Wats have their own boats for practical and ceremonial purposes. In the past, when the alms round was still conducted in this region,



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monks would travel by rowboat from one household jetty to the next to receive alms. Monks also travel from one wat to another by boat to teach, study or supplement the monastic labour force at rituals and ceremonies. Today one often sees monks steering motorboats along the waterways, travelling on an errand between wats or to the houses of laypersons. Although monks in Theravada orders are not permitted by monastic rules to drive motor vehicles, this prohibition is said not to apply to waterborne transport. Boats continue to be used by laypersons to travel to and from the wat for religious purposes. Wats are well set up for river travel. Each one is located beside a waterway, usually a major confluence. Each has a dock and jetty where laypersons can moor their boats and usually a covered riverside shelter where passengers and travellers can rest. In the typically elongated villages of this region, many households are situated several kilometres from the nearest temple. Formerly, a trip to the temple along sinuous rivers could take hours. The popularisation of motorboats has greatly shortened the time of these journeys, enabling the residents of these increasingly busy riverine thoroughfares to maintain a degree of community cohesion by interacting with each other in their wats. At large festivals, scores of boats cluster by the landing of a temple, blocking traffic along the river. Many of the wats also have a tuuk ngo, or racing longboat. Built of koki tree wood by a skilled local craftsman and rowed by several dozen laymen, the boats are raced in annual competitions that pit the different wats against each other. The boat races each year coincide with the high point of the floods, when the water in the rivers traditionally was at its freshest. The inter-wat boat racing festival is the biggest and most anticipated festival of the year in this region. It provides a means for residents of villages dispersed throughout an extensive network of rivers to interact with each other. The races are held in Moat Peam [Vietnamese: Go Quao], a port on the Prek Thom that is centrally located within the network. To win in the annual competition brings great distinction to a wat community. To have been a crew member on a winning boat remains a mark of distinction throughout one’s life. The prize pennants are proudly displayed in the reception rooms of the wats for visitors to admire. Former competition-winning boats, some up to a hundred years old, are sometimes stored in boatsheds within the grounds of the wats.

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Development, Displacement and Encompassment Although Khmer people have adapted elegantly to the difficult living conditions in this saltwater river zone, the transformation of their region under successive regimes has brought significant hardships. French and Vietnamese development plans for the Ca Mau Peninsula centred on digging drainage and irrigation canals to facilitate export agriculture. Migrants and refugees from various localities in Vietnam were induced to settle along the new canal grid. Under the French, farmers from the Red River delta were resettled in several areas of drained swampland along the northern half of the peninsula called casiers tonkinois. In the 1950s, Catholic refugees from North Vietnam were resettled along canals to the north and east of the Prek Thom river system. Over several decades, Khmer riverside dwellers were encircled and outnumbered by canal-dwelling Vietnamesespeakers and institutions. Interactions between these groups have been generally peaceable, but in several episodes of violent conflict, dating from the early twentieth century, Khmers were also displaced by these newcomers.17  During the Indochina wars, Vietnam’s communist-led resistance took advantage of the inaccessibility and heavy forest cover of the peninsula to set up bases from which to attack the French and USRepublican armies. Owing to the limited efficacy of governmentdeployed terrestrial or riverine forces, the region became one of the most heavily bombed in southern Vietnam. Repeated bombing during the 1960s, in particular, forced the majority of the Khmer residents of Ca Mau, southern Hau Giang and western Bac Lieu provinces to flee. Very few of these displaced Khmer refugees ever returned to their riverside homes.18  Canal digging and dyke construction intensified in the post-war years and by the mid-1980s nearly the entire saltwater rivers region had become a freshwater zone. For the first time, Khmer residents could drink water drawn directly from the canals and rivers in front of their houses year round. This development had the effect of reducing Khmer dependency on communal wells in their neighbourhoods and temples, undermining one of the foundations of communal solidarity. The concurrent introduction of irrigation canals and new rice varieties has won praise from some Khmer residents who speak approvingly of the increased productivity and new



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opportunities to grow vegetables and fruit trees provided by these developments. However, the new rice varieties introduced in the 1980s were very dependent on pesticides, which contaminated the canals and rivers and also entered the ponds. By the mid-1990s, all of these water sources had become too dangerous to drink and Khmer communities in this region faced conditions of water scarcity even more dire than in the pre-canal period. Today dry-season drinking water is drawn almost universally from the deep aquifer. Accessing it is costly. Waterborne pesticides also massively killed off the aquatic plants and animals upon which Khmer people rely as a staple food source. Additionally, the new rice varieties consumed so much capital in the way of fertiliser, labour, pesticides, and other inputs that many farmers found themselves making a loss. The effect of these developments has been to force many Khmer riverside dwellers to sell off their land to repay debts. Many have abandoned agriculture and have left the area for employment in the cities. Another consequence of these population transfers and development projects has been to entrench Vietnamese cultural standards and state institutions at the heart of public life. Whereas in the midtwentieth century, temples were the only schools in many riverine communities in this region, today most Khmer youths prefer to attend state schools, where they can gain, with government financial assistance, the skills and competencies valued in the public sphere. As a consequence, the last two decades have seen a sharp decline in monastic ordinations and many temples have only three or fewer resident monks. Very few wats offer the religious and cultural studies programme that is so prominent in provinces to the east. At best, a few temples offer basic Khmer literacy classes but Khmer literacy levels are extremely low. The alms round is another practice that has been discontinued in the last two decades. Most temples now have their own ricefields and laypeople bring contributions to the wats. One reason abbots give for discontinuing this custom is the somewhat Marxist argument that to seek alms imposes too heavy a burden on poor and struggling families. Such trends amount to a precipitous reduction in the centrality of the wat as a religious and educational centre for the Khmer population of this region. Khmer abbots from the saltwater rivers region have been leaders in modifying Khmer monastic formats in response to Vietnamese expectations. One such initiative, supported by senior abbots, was

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the establishment in the early 1990s of the state-funded Pali supplementary school in Soc Trang, which offers the full state school curriculum in Vietnamese, in addition to some Pali and Khmer subjects. The school is open only to monks, who receive state scholarships to attend. Although this school exploits monastic formats to introduce the secular curriculum to Khmers, monks from the saltwater rivers region also value the opportunity to gain literacy in Pali and Khmer. Another modification, which monks from this region have pioneered, has been to make Khmer religious formats accessible to Vietnamese lay Buddhists. Many monks offer chants and sermons in Vietnamese to Vietnamese laypersons. In return, they accept alms on an individual basis and financial contributions for wat refurbishments. Vietnamese laypersons attend such wats in increasing numbers, sometimes outnumbering Khmer laypeople, and have taken dominant positions on temple management boards. In cases such as these, the monastic format has been preserved but its cultural content has become in practical terms Vietnamese. Assimilation seems to be a leitmotif in this region of saltwater rivers. However, who exactly is being assimilated? One point of view might be that Khmer communities have remained in situ along the rivers of the southern delta in Vietnam only at the expense of becoming culturally Vietnamese. Alternatively, it might be argued that the distinctive water-oriented civilisation embodied by people in this region, including by its many self-identifying Viet residents, has not been imposed from without, but is significantly indebted to the ecological accomplishments of its longstanding Khmer inhabitants. The notion of a Vietnamese debt to Khmers is starkly articulated in a story about the origins of the two peoples told to me by a Khmer resident of Kien Giang: Khmer people come from earth. That is why our skin is so dark. One day, a holy man, ta eisey, scooped up a pile of dirt, blew a spell on it and created two people, a man and a woman. They were the first two Khmer people. To enable them to reproduce he conjured three magical pills. He gave them to the couple and told the man to take two and the woman to take one. The pills would cause them to feel sexual desire for each other and join together to have children. Not following his instructions, the woman took two of the pills and the man one. That is why women have stronger sexual desire than men and a stronger desire to procreate.



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The Viets come from water. One day, in the time of the Buddha, there was a Khmer girl who was lonely. She wandered down to the river and saw its surface was covered in beautiful foam bubbles. She captured some of the foam. It was shining white and beautiful and she wanted to befriend it. So she used a spell to transform the foam into a person. This was the first Viet person, created from water by a Khmer girl. Viet people’s skin is so white and beautiful because they originate from water bubbles.

Uncomfortably, this story endorses dubious phenotypical distinctions often made between dark-skinned Khmers and white-skinned Vietnamese. It also validates colonial-era contrasts between earth-bound rice-farming Khmers and river-dwelling Viets, which are equally questionable in a region where everyone lives on the river. Also disconcerting to Khmer ethnonationalists, however, the tale offers no hint of the existence of Khmer resentment at Vietnamese domination, but instead describes a relationship based on love and admiration. Such sentiments, especially when directed by Khmers towards Vietnamese are of a kind that successive assimilationist Vietnamese states might approve. Most astonishingly, however, it provides an origin narrative for the Viets that is radically local and Khmer-centric. Viets were magically conjured from nature by a Khmer girl, acting out of loneliness and a surfeit of desire. De-centring the myth of Viet origins in the north, the tale re-centres the Viets as a people who owe their origins in the region to Khmer approval and agency.

The Past as Resurgent, Potent, Immobilising Khmers of the saltwater river region frequently assert that the eastern seaboard provinces of Preah Trapeang (Tra Vinh) and Khleang (Soc Trang) set the cultural standard for the Khmers of the Mekong Delta. Khmer literacy, education and monastic life are said to be more developed “up” in (nu leu) Preah Trapeang. The longboat races in Khleang are bigger and more effervescent. In both provinces, Khmers are said to be more numerous, concentrated and politically powerful, and have a richer religious life than Khmers “down” on (nu kraom) the peninsula. Some locals regard themselves as culturally deficient, as having failed to adhere to monastic codes or preserve their Khmer cultural roots. When pressed to describe the strengths

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as opposed to the deficits of their own way of life, local monastics have told me: “we are better at Vietnamese” or “more practical” than other Khmer Krom. Khmers living elsewhere in the Mekong Delta widely agree, commenting upon the strongly Vietnamised nature of the everyday language, place names, schooling options, folk culture, and monastic practice of the Khmers of the saltwater river region. However, evidence from this region suggests that it embodies a way of being Khmer that may never have resembled that of the eastern seaboard. This is a way of life based around rivers and movement, landscape modification, trade and intense intercultural contacts. Here boats are central to Khmer livelihoods and sociality. The rowboat has been critical to the building, utilisation and replenishment of collective freshwater reserves, to the construction of communal institutions and participation in religious life. Motorised boats have enabled the maintenance of Khmer religious and cultural identity, allowing communal bonds to develop over extensive stretches of the river system. Through modernisation, environmental transformation and increasing intercultural exchanges, boats have remained at the heart of local life. Whereas in other regions the wat, the sand dune or the mountainside village emerge as key focal points for Khmer cultural elaboration, here the river and the boat might be said to symbolise what it means to be Khmer. One might ask why Khmers of the saltwater region seem to have fared better than those residing along rivers in the central delta, who have experienced greater displacement in the context of longterm Vietnamese encroachment. Possibly, the pronounced saline conditions have allowed Khmers to prosper. The difficulty of residing in and exploiting this saline-prone region may have acted as a brake on rapid and overwhelming encompassment by cultural others. Cooperation in freshwater provision was essential to survival and may have built up stronger communal bonds among locals than in the freshwater-dominated central delta where co-operation was less vital, since each household had sufficient access to the necessities of life. One might add that a comparatively advantageous medium-level intensity of connection by water allowed Khmer cultural institutions to become pre-eminent and remain so throughout the Prek Thom river basin. As a self-contained river system with only one access point on the Gulf of Thailand, this riparian “intranet” connected scores of Khmer villages to each other while providing few if



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any linkages to settlements outside the basin. By contrast, Khmer communities along the rivers of the central delta and the maze of estuaries of the southern peninsula are more open and accessible to important inter-regional water routes and hence vulnerable to incursions at multiple points. As we have seen, this situation began to change dramatically in the early 1980s when the water conditions in this basin were altered, triggering the intensification of agriculture, immigration, communications and the appearance of new institutions and identities. In spite of these changes, a set of myths told by residents of the Prek Thom system provides clues to the persistence of a distinctive Khmer cultural ethos. The myths reveal that the waterways are graveyard for a small armada of boats, from golden royal vessels to racing longboats that sank after their occupants committed infractions against the local area. Entombed beneath the waters, these vessels magically punish any who would recover them, and impede passage along the rivers to travellers who do not offer their respects.

The Sunken Golden Boat Many Khmer people in this river basin told me about a sunken golden boat located in the grounds of Wat Somraong in Giong Rieng District, Kien Giang. The wat is situated on a sinuous tributary of the Prek Thom in a region of dense Khmer settlement. What follows is a collation of different versions of the myth told to me by local residents: It was a seagoing sailing ship, sampou. The boat was long, at least 20 metres from bow to stern. It had dragon heads on the front and rear prows, which were raised, like the royal boats one sees in Thailand. The entire boat, hull, oars and decorations, were made of gold. The boat belonged to the Khmer king who was sailing through here visiting his kingdom, going from place to place. At that time, this whole area was still covered by the ocean. When the boat reached this place someone on board scooped up some water to drink and the boat sank. All on board drowned, including the king. One version of the story is that a pregnant woman and her child were passengers on the boat. The captain gave instructions when passing through this region not to take anything, be it water from the river or plants from the forest. But the woman’s

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child was thirsty, so she scooped up some water in a coconut shell for her child to drink and that’s when the ship sank. This happened a long time ago and the ocean has since receded and the boat has turned to earth. You still can make out the shape of the ship in the ground. It is said that the spirit of the drowned king and his crewman guard the site.19  If you use bad language in the vicinity of the boat you will die on the spot. The same will happen if you desecrate the area by pissing on it. It was first discovered by a party of Chinese people who were travelling through. They saw one of the boat’s oars, which was made of gold, and dug into the ground to unearth it. When they retrieved the oar they laughed out loud. Suddenly, the ground collapsed around them, burying them alive. Some versions of this episode relate that the Chinese treasure hunters were entombed for talking impolitely or passing wind in the presence of the royal boat.20  An intriguing variant of this story was provided by a young monk from the district. One day, long after the golden boat sank, it again floated to the surface, where it was spied by a party of passing Chinese. They tried to recover the boat but it submerged again, consigning them to a watery grave.21 

Wat Somraong is situated in a remote part of the district. Although far from the sealed road, the temple is encircled by bustling waterways and is easily accessed by water. In the rear of its grounds stand two hillocks, each about one and a half metres high, spaced around 50 metres apart. They are the prow and stern of the royal boat, said my guide, a senior monk resident in the temple. Atop the “prow” hill sprouts a large bush mango tree. The “stern” hill is scattered with pieces of stone made of compressed seashell fragments. Between the two hillocks, a neak ta shrine has been built under an enormous somraong tree after which the temple gets its name. The shrine contains two smooth round boulders. It marks the spot where the party of Chinese treasure hunters was entombed. One monk told me that if you stamp the earth at that place, you can hear a hollow reverberation. Fifteen to twenty years ago he stomped the ground—one could still hear the reverberation then. On Chinese New Year the temple is full of people who come to pray. They always come to this area and offer incense in the shrine to the neak ta. The main festival, however, is around the Khmer New Year. In the words of a senior local abbot:



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Ceremonies to honour the golden boat are held every year in the fourth month. Two long clouds appear over the site at that time each year. The two clouds stretch from far beyond the horizon and end here, where they point down towards the site of the sunken royal boat.

Resurfacing Racing Longboats Many people told me of a racing longboat tuuk ngo that mysteriously sank, resurfaced, and sank again in a river beside the Cong Binh ferry crossing in Hoa An subdistrict of Giong Rieng. Several versions exist as to how the boat came to sink: Long, long ago, a tuuk ngo boat was travelling through here, loaded with golden objects. The boat sank, the treasures with it.

And: The tuuk ngo was built somewhere in the local area. It was not yet finished when it was paddled to Cambodia to take part in a race. It won first prize. On the way home it sank at the site of the Cong Binh ferry crossing, along with the prize winnings and all hands. Even though the oarsmen knew how to swim they could not swim to safety.

A more elaborate version was given to me by a 55-year-old Khmer man living close by where the boat sank. It injects a moral dimension into the tale of the sinking. The tuuk ngo was carved out of a single tall tree that grew on this site. People came from Cambodia to cut it down to build the boat. Local people did not dare to do so. Khmer people have the belief that big trees are sacred—there is some spirit or demon in them. The people from Cambodia were powerful sorcerers. They brought two white elephants to use in the rituals to placate the tree. The construction commenced with rituals that lasted for three months. But when the tree finally was cut down the elephants died. The boat was still not finished when it was entered in a boat racing competition and it won first prize. The owners intended to take the boat with them back to Cambodia along with the large quantity of gold they had won. But the boat would not stand for this and as soon as they set off it sank, along with all of the gold and eight crew members. Even though they were good swimmers they could not swim to safety.

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Years later, the story continues, the boat floated to the surface. Then it sank again. Passersby saw this happen. About 20 years ago it surfaced right before the eyes of an elderly woman who lives nearby. She took a piece of rope made from banana fibre, tied it to the bow of the tuuk ngo and hauled it up to the riverbank. Noticing that the boat was covered in weeds and mud, she took a broom and tried to brush it clean. Right away the boat slowly started to sink back into the water until it completely vanished. Another version relates that a group of Chinese heard the story of a sunken boat laden with gold and came to see if they could recover the treasure. They prayed at the site for seven days and seven nights. In the end, their exertions paid off. The boat floated to the surface. They reached out to grasp the golden objects, but just as they did so, the boat sank again.

Today, whenever another tuuk ngo approaches the spot where the boat sank, the surface of the water right above the sunken boat churns and boils: When another tuuk ngo wants to pass, its occupants have to ask for permission and make offerings and prayers at the spot where the tuuk ngo sank. Otherwise a whirlpool will appear and sink them too. Some say that those on board a passing tuuk ngo have to sound a gong and dance in order to appease the sunken tuuk ngo and gain safe passage. Other types of boat are not similarly affected. However, if the occupants of any passing boat should shout or speak loudly at this place, their boat will sink. Also, pregnant women should not come into close proximity to the sunken vessel. To this day, at every ok omboc festival, when boat races are conducted in nearby Go Quao, people living in this area can still hear the sound of screaming and the beating of gongs.22 

Repeat efforts to salvage the tuuk ngo have failed: In recent times, someone came with a mechanical excavator to attempt to raise the boat. The engine died and all attempts to get it to work again failed. The excavator remains at the spot on the riverbank where it stalled. Attempts were made to winch up the tuuk ngo by boat. However, the propellers on salvage craft would stop turning as they approached the site. Winch and dredge engines would stop working, although a boat just passing



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by would be unaffected. Foreign engineers also have come to try to raise it but they too have failed. The only way to recover it, according to one elderly local, is that two people must be sacrificed; therefore it can never be raised. He also asserted that one cannot build a bridge across the river at the place where the tuuk ngo sank. At each attempt by the authorities to do so, the earth has subsided; it will not support the pylons.

Similar details are found in the tale of a different sunken racing boat that resurfaced in the southern parts of Kien Giang Province: The tuuk ngo is submerged under water. It must have sunk long ago. About 15–20 years ago, the bow rose up to the water’s surface, briefly, and then sank again. Because of this strange occurrence, some people went to the site and sat and meditated to try to raise the boat but they could not because it is sacred (sel ).

This submerged boat also impedes movement on the waterway where it sank: It is located in because one has not because the the boat’s sacred over it.23 

Kinh Queo (Turning Canal) named as such to turn to avoid the submerged boat. This is boat is blocking the waterway, but is due to power: it will not permit other boats to pass

To the Khmer people who relayed these tales to me, the entombed boats attest to the rich and ancient heritage of the Khmers in this river basin. Tales about visitations of the king recall the historical sovereignty of the Khmer court over this region. The sunken seafaring boat suggests that Khmers historically were involved in maritime trade and mobility. The racing longboats are evidence of the longstanding vitality in the region of Khmer military and cultural institutions. For one interlocutor, the accounts of submerged goldencrusted and gold-laden boats affirmed that the Khmers were once a strong and prosperous people and could again be so. Theirs is a heritage that sternly resists appropriation by foreign treasure hunters and magically stymies attempts to deploy modern technology and foreign know-how to dislodge it. The tales delineate the existence of a local moral order: proscribing actions and behaviours that are deemed offensive and

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imposing standards of etiquette. The stories have a moral. Nature is not for the taking, it belongs to another. Respect the propriety of spiritual predecessors or bear the consequences. In them, death by drowning is payback for disrespecting the sensitivities of those who dwell in a given abode, for taking what belongs to another. The stories invest the locality itself with the power to punish infractions against it, even when committed by a personage as august as the king. The punishments are as harsh as the standards are strict. Actions as seemingly trivial as scooping up a cupful of river water to quench one’s child’s thirst or removing a single tree from the local forest are all it takes to condemn an entire boat crew to a watery grave. The gruesome manner by which the waters and lands of the region respond to slights against them, by engulfing alive the offenders, reprises an idiom that is familiar to all Khmer people who hear the stories. Khmer children often are told that if they misbehave or disrespect their parents, the earth goddess Preah Thorani will swallow them up (Thorani srop).24  This parental horror story recruits the earth goddess as a third party enforcer of an ethical standard. Khmer sunken boat stories outline a similar form of retributive justice in which the victim directly punishes the perpetrators. Unlike Preah Thorani, in these tales the riverine environment is not impelled to enforce ethical behaviour between humans. Rather it acts only to uphold its own integrity. Specifically, the tales are preoccupied with offences committed against a locality by those who pass through it. The tales offer a compendium of such infractions: removing resources or cultural treasures from a place through which one travels; disregarding the customs of those through whose lands one passes; lacking sensitivity and tact when in transit; trespass; defilement and disrespect for homes and graves. Often the transgressors are explicitly outsiders. “Chinese” are most prominent, but offenders include foreign salvage teams and even the Khmer king. One sees this pre-occupation too in the distinctive nature of the punishment that is meted out. Crucially the penalty is immobilisation. The submerged boats arrest mobility, permanently detain violators and their craft at the crime scene, drag down the strongest swimmers, stop boats in their tracks, freeze propellers and cause machine engines to die. These wrongs and their penalties give a vivid sense of the particular circumstances of the river-dwelling Khmers of this region.



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Rivers provide the basis for Khmer residence, subsistence and community, while at the same time acting as major regional thoroughfares and trading routes. Khmer houses and temples line the banks of rivers along which a high number of cargo and passenger ships passes on a daily basis. In the last few decades, the dominant vessels of this river system have been inter-provincial passenger boats, powerful behemoths that roar at high speed down the waterways, pushing out a massive bow wave that swamps small and unsteady wooden boats, and carves chunks out of the riverbanks. Many occupants of the precarious wooden boats and riverbank residences affected by this boisterous traffic are in fact Khmer people. As locals they have benefitted from the burgeoning opportunities to trade, communicate and travel provided by such connections yet also are vulnerable to dislocation in the process. Such a context is undoubtedly crucial for understanding these stories. Intriguingly, people and vessels that pass through a locality are recruited recursively into policing mobility through it. The cycle starts when occupants of a passing boat attempt to take something from a place or insult it. They are punished with sinking and immobilisation. Once entombed, the wrongdoers are recruited into the policing effort and show themselves to be just as sensitive to slight as the local powers that once punished them. Bad manners, noisy behaviour, bodily functions—the sheer presence of unruly human beings—are enough to provoke the drowned crew of the royal boat or the racing longboats into swallowing newcomers who perpetrate such misconduct. Whoever insults or attempts to remove these entombed vessels is in turn immobilised and entombed in the same grave. The submerged vessels have become part of the local landscape, imbued with its qualities of aversion to removal, sensitivity to slight and capacity to arrest movement. They announce their presence and demand respect and propitiation from other vessels that seek passage; failure to comply results in further sinkings. As the underwater graveyard fills up, it becomes ever more powerful and prickly. Some sunken boats prohibit movement altogether, banning bridge building or requiring travellers to find a new route. It is likely that the association that many of these submerged objects have with Khmer royal authority is the key to their imputed potency. The image of a submerged royal boat that polices morality and mobility in this river basin evokes the Khmer king as a cosmological protector of local Khmers. Lest the connection be forgotten,

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each year two long clouds reach from over the horizon and point down to the site where the royal boat rests. Likewise, many Khmers are aware that racing longboats, such as those that police riverine movement constituted the naval force of the Khmer kingdom. A middle-aged farmer who lived next to the site of one of the sunken longboats remarked: The boat races that we celebrate each year originated in naval warfare. In the past there were no guns and vehicles. People fought with swords and spears and in boats. The tuuk ngo were fighting boats, up to 45 metres long and propelled by paddles. They could move very fast. They travelled in an armada of many boats. The enemy was Champa and battles were fought in Vung Tau. On the way back from the victory the boats would race each other and this is the origin of the boat races.

A common episode in Khmer sunken boat stories is when the boats rise again to the surface. At times, a boat will resurface spontaneously. On occasion, a boat may rise to the surface in response to concerted prayers, but on other occasions it will not do so. Just why the boats resurface is unknown, but the resurfacings appear volitional. They take place only under the right circumstances and at a time of the boat’s own choosing. They never last for long. Inevitably, something is done by humans to cause offence and the boat slips back under the waters. The resurfacing is consequential, however, for it makes known the presence of the boat, gives rise to speculation about its origins and the reasons for its submergence, and stimulates musings about local history, morality and agency.

Tidal History Tales of the sinking and resurfacing boats of the Prek Thom basin are striking and singular. Few others like them exist in the rich corpus of stories that make up the folk heritage of the Khmers of Kampuchea Krom. The closest are the tales of magical flotsam told by the Khmers of Kompong Thom in Khleang (Soc Trang Province), in which the land similarly punishes disrespectful waterborne travellers with sinking, and beached flotsam from the shipwrecks continues to magically immobilise passersby. Somewhat similar too are stories from the freshwater rivers of the central delta about the surfacing Buddha statues that offer protection to war refugees. In common



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with tales told by Khmers who live elsewhere in the Mekong Delta, the stories provide vivid proof of Khmer precedence and moral authority in a landscape that remains infused with magical power. They also give revealing insights into specific concerns of the Khmers who have made a home in this region of saltwater rivers. All stories told within this region are imbued with an acute sense of historical depth. Humans live in a landscape over which animals once had full dominion. Migrants settle along rivers populated by spiritual predecessors. State development projects intrude into and unravel longstanding Khmer communities. However, the history of these stories is emphatically nonlinear. Projects and peoples do not progressively supersede each other as they do in state evolutionist histories. Neither do they exemplify a Buddhist process of devolution or disintegration. Instead, the past is constantly resurfacing, whether it be in the form of crocodiles that erupt into the affairs of men from below or stones that resurface after a millennium underground. Entire royal complexes disappear into the liquid soil, ships sink, and travellers are swallowed by the earth, yet none is permanently submerged and at unexpected moments they rise again to plain view. Like the water that rises and falls in this tide-affected waterlogged plain, the past never drains away. It sinks, resurfaces, and subsides once more, in a constant tidal oscillation. These accounts also raise profound questions about who holds authority over this vast peninsula. Superficially, there is no dispute. Vietnamese hold pre-eminent military, juridical, economic and cultural authority over the region. Whatever authority Khmers might once have had is long gone; Vietnamese power today is uncontested and reaches deep into Khmer hamlets and households. Yet if Khmer authority ever was effaced, its disappearance is superficial, as attested in stories about artefacts that re-emerge from the earth and provoke memories of Khmer court authority, subterranean royal boats that police morality, and racing boats that resurface and interdict free passage. Khmer sovereignty over the peninsula remains potent, and is made manifest in miraculous events and the telling of stories. This sovereignty oscillates, however, and is distributed among a variety of creatures, spiritual entities and cultures that find a home in this saltwater region. Like the tides themselves, one or another of these actors may briefly assume pre-eminence, however, as the stories suggest, the ability of any to maintain permanent ascendancy in this region is far from assured.

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5 Flooded Mountains: Encircled by Water, Divided by Nations The most westerly of the Khmer-settled regions in Kampuchea Krom lies to the south of where the Bassac River crosses the modern Cambodia–Vietnam border. It is made up of around 64 Khmer villages within a province that Khmer people call Moat Chrouk and the Vietnamese An Giang. Situated within the Mekong River’s high floodplain, this is one of the most challenging sites for human habitation in the entire Mekong basin.1  Every rainy season, water pouring down the Mekong and Bassac breaches the high natural levees that line these rivers. It spills onto the surrounding plains, covering them to a depth of up to five metres above mean sea level (Wassmann et al. 2004: 97). In years of heavy flow, these deep inundations can last from five to six months. People have long been able to live and prosper in this flooded landscape owing to a set of landforms whose existence predates that of the Mekong Delta itself. These are a group of mountains created when rock pushed above the earth’s surface during the Cretaceous era (Kiernan 2010: 103). They belong to a range that extends from the Thai border through the Cardamom and Elephant Mountains in southern Cambodia. The mountains that stand in An Giang Province, clustered around the district capital of Tri Ton, are at the eastern end of this range. Composed mostly of granite, they rise above the surface of the delta to a maximum height of 700 metres. Being among the only landforms in the high floodplain to remain permanently above the high water mark these features provide an 162



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advantageous site for human habitation in a region circumscribed by water. Khmer people on and around these mountains have forged a distinctive way of life. Residing in villages sandwiched between the steep slopes and the floodplain, they have made a living by drawing resources from the forest and the inundated flatlands. Collaboration in defence, resource pooling and ritual activities has rendered life secure and has fostered strong communal sentiments. The material culture and religious practices of these mountainside dwellers often are considered timeless, however, the vibrancy of Khmer cultural identifications in this region has been secured in the context of profound socio-cultural change and participation in extra-local exchanges. In many respects, their mountainside villages appear insular, yet they are connected by kinship, trade and religious networks, as well as by mythology and history, to a chain of mountainside localities that spans the Vietnam–Cambodia border. The border-straddling mountain massif where these Khmer people live also has been a lightening rod for intense religious and ethnonationalist sentiments emanating from both Vietnam and Cambodia. Considered forbidding and inaccessible, these floodencircled peaks have for centuries been the preserve of sectarians, healers and religious virtuosi and a destination for pilgrims who seek to tap their sacred power. Home to bandits, rebels and armed millenarian movements, they served as a strategic base and supply route for the communist-led insurgencies of both countries. In the nationalist imaginaries of both Cambodia and Vietnam the mountains are the site of gruesome atrocities that were perpetrated by barbaric national neighbours. These atrocities are commemorated in rituals and myths that construe the border that runs through this massif, and through its Khmer communities, as a sacred line of defence. The mountains were also the site for revolutionary nationbuilding projects that competed in the attempt to draw their Khmer residents into the respective orbits of both countries. In the last half of the twentieth century, these visions were in constant and often violent conflict, to the great detriment of the Khmer people who inhabit this mountain massif. The tensions erupted in the late 1970s in a short and brutal border war whose consequences for the Khmer residents of this locale were devastating. Khmer communities were torn apart in this conflict, lives were destroyed and security of tenure was eroded. The lingering effects of

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these upheavals include a disoriented sense of personal identity and the proliferation of myths about wars, abductions and refuge-seeking that are said to have taken place in a nominally ancient past. Amidst contemporary state attempts to develop this region, which have often been destabilising, Khmer people have been able to stage a precarious recovery and are in the process of reconstituting a unique mountainous locality that is encircled by water and lies between nations.

Locating the Mountains in History and Myth Archaeological research suggests humans have occupied localities in this vicinity for well over 2,000 years. Angkor Borei, in Cambodia, to the northwest of the Tri Ton massif has been settled continuously since the fourth century BCE (Stark 2006). On Phnom Bat Preah Ther (Nui Ba The), to the east, Aymonier uncovered evidence of four successive eras of human occupation: polished stone artefacts from the prehistoric era; seventh century CE pre-Angkorean inscriptions and statues; Sanskrit inscriptions concurrent with the height of Angkor; and the contemporary predominantly Khmer Buddhist settlement (Aymonier 1900: 144–5). A number of inscribed steles and Shiva linga, a bronze Shiva image, and the sculpture of a male royal personage—all dated to the sixth or seventh centuries—have been discovered around the Tri Ton massif, from Phnom Svam (Nui Sam) in the north to Phnom Kto in the south (Malleret 1943: 17–8). Contemporary Khmer residents are conscious of this ancient history. Wat Thleng (in present-day Tri Ton), believed to be the oldest Khmer temple in this region, is said by locals to have been founded in 400 CE. Undoubtedly this Buddhist wat was constructed on the site of an earlier Brahmanic installation. Aymonier discovered a 27-line Sanskrit inscription in this wat, dated to the seventh century. It records an offering of male and female slaves and land presented by two town governors and others to the god Sankaranarayana (Aymonier 1900: 147). Archaeologists note that localities in this region long have been connected with each other and with far distant empires. This area was the heart of the ancient kingdom of Funan, Southeast Asia’s earliest Indic polity and a precursor state to the Khmer empire. A maritime kingdom, Funan was a port of call on trade routes between India and China. Internally the mountains were connected in the pre-Angkorean period by a network of canals that ran northwest



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from Nui Sap (Phnom Thom) and Nui Ba The, to Angkor Borei, via the mountains of Tri Ton. Other canals ran south to the coastal mountains in present-day Kien Giang Province (Malleret 1943: 17). Three inscriptions employing identical formulae, each recording a king’s name, have been found in Phnom Svam, Phnom Kto and Phnom Bat Preah Ther, which led Coedes to suggest that this constellation of mountains once might have been the cradle of a primitive Cambodian dynastic family (in Malleret 1943: 18). Although these mountains are referred to in Vietnamese as the Seven Mountains (That son, Bay nui ); the Khmers who live in this region identify at least 20 separate peaks, each with its own Khmer name and fund of local legends. The legends are worth discussing, for they provide insights into how locals conceptualise the origins of these landforms, their geographic and historical significance, their role as places of refuge and settlement, and their religious meanings. Interestingly, these legends tie the mountains into a number of well-known mythological epics, demonstrating how locals orient themselves narratively by participating in renditions of a pan-Khmer mythic geography. Folk legends of the Khmer residents of this region speculate on the origins of the mountains. One legend has it that they were created during the events recorded in the Cambodian epic the Reamker. When Neang Seda, Princess Sita, was abducted by the demon king Krong Reap, her husband Ream and his younger brother Leak went in pursuit and fought to rescue her. The combatants used arrows of fire. These flaming weapons exploded into many fragments and fell to earth, becoming the mountains of this region.2  Phnom Pi (Two Mountains), also known as Phnom Kong Rei, is associated with another widely known epic, the tale of Puthisan and his wife the demoness Neang Kong Rei. In one version, Puthisan struck the demoness with his sword and her severed body fell to earth becoming two mountains. Some say the hero’s sword cleft a chasm between two mountains in this area into which the demoness, who was pursuing him, fell. A fragment from another legendary journey tells of a giant, Yiet, who was passing this region. He became tired and lowered his shoulderpole and baskets to the ground, which transformed into a mountain known to locals as Phnom Dongreach or Shoulderpole Mountain. In ancient times, it is said, these mountains were islands. When Buddha first came to these parts he strode from peak to peak across

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a vast ocean, arriving on the island of O Keo (Oc Eo), present-day Ba The Mountain, where he preached his first sermons to a species of lizard. Residents of the western slopes of Phnom Kto say the Buddha came to their locality as well, where he preached a sermon at Elephant Rock, a site that remains sacred to this day. Beneath the slopes of two local mountains, it is reported, are the wrecks of two sailing ships, one silver, belonging to the Siamese king, another golden, belonging to the Khmer monarch. The ships struck submerged rocks when trying to find a passage between the islands. Some also consider this mountainous region to have been the abode of the fugitive queen Neang Chan who, as we have seen, was pursued by boat downriver, eventually throwing herself into the sea in Soc Trang.3  Some tales speak of abductions that befell locals during an era of Siamese expansion. Neang Sok Kro-op, the fabled fragrant-haired lady, whose abduction to Siam is associated with the creation of mountains in Battambang, is said by locals to have been born on the mountain Phnom Kto. She was lured on board a ship dispatched by the Siamese king, who desired to marry her. On its way back to Siam the ship was pursued by a crocodile that tried to save her. To deter the crocodile, sailors threw overboard a chicken coop, which turned into a mountain. With the crocodile still in pursuit sailors jettisoned a cage full of ducks, which also became a mountain. The crocodile itself then also turned into a mountain. All three peaks are found in Battambang. On the same mountain is a boulder formation that locals liken to a tortoise. In the past, there lived a tortoise that laid golden eggs. Hearing of this, Siamese troops came to rob the eggs. Devastated, the tortoise turned into a boulder that cranes its neck towards Thailand. Also on this mountain is the petrified form of a passing Chinese treasure hunter, who turned to stone when he attempted to rob a beehive.4  Other tales told by locals conceptualise the mountains as a site of refuge. Two mountains in this vicinity were visited by the legendary twins Preah Ko and Preah Keo. Preah Keo, the future king of Cambodia, and Preah Ko a white bull with magical powers, were twin brothers born to the same mother, a poor Khmer woman. The brothers had numerous conflicts, first with greedy villagers, then with Siamese troops at a time when the Siamese king was attempting to annex the Khmer kingdom. On occasion, Preah Ko used his magical powers to defeat attempts by the Siamese king to win the



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Khmer kingdom. At other times, when overpowered or captured by the Siamese, Preah Ko would fly to freedom, his twin brother clasping his tail. In numerous miraculous escapes of this kind, the twin brothers flew to mountain after mountain throughout the Khmer kingdom, where they found temporary refuge until the Siamese caught up with them. Residents of Phnom Neng Non, in Krabao [Tinh Bien District] showed me a hoof-shaped depression in a boulder above their village that they said was made by the white bull Preah Ko when the twins visited their locality. Elephant Rock, on the slopes of Phnom Kto is another site said by locals to have been visited by this legendary pair. These stories weave the mountains into a host of legends, which position them as a site for voyages, refuge and narrative elaboration. However, the mountains themselves are not ideal for residence. Their slopes are steep, rocky and strewn with gigantic boulders. Elderly residents told me that until the end of the Indochina wars, the mountains were heavily forested, and full of wild animals. The most dangerous creatures were tigers, bush pigs and poisonous snakes. A tale about the origins of the place name Tri Ton, which Khmers refer to as Sva Ton (Monkey pulls), illustrates the dangers humans faced. The tale relates how people travelling through the mountains would be attacked by monkeys (sva), who tore apart men to eat their flesh, and abducted women to make them their wives. The mountains are also the abode of spiritual beings. They belong to another world (than), in the joint between heaven and earth, over which preside the kae noe, half-bird, half-woman, and the stern krudh, or garuda. Their slopes are home to arak spirits, spirits inhabiting large trees, and ghosts (kmuich). I was unable to obtain information about these latter beings since my interlocutors would fall silent whenever I asked if ghosts still lived on the slopes. However, a fortune teller, kru tiey, told me that six ghost lords preside over the mountains, whose duty is to help those who request assistance. The ghost lords will punish with sickness and bodily possession anyone who does not keep promises made to repay them for their assistance. In the ancient past, the only humans who dared reside in this dangerous and mystical terrain were hermits, ta eisey [Pali: isi ], who meditated on their forested slopes. People of exceptional merit, they were nourished by alms from invisible beings and were immune to attack by dangerous animals. Several of the mountains are renowned

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as meditation sites, with the largest, Phnom Polpia [Vietnamese: Nui Cam], named after a hermit who attained enlightenment there.5  It is said that during his long years of meditation on this mountain, the hermit Sim Pili learned many magical fighting techniques. He passed on this knowledge to two of his students, Sina Moan and Sina Thia. In the eighteenth century these two disciples went from province to province throughout Kampuchea Krom fighting against the attempts by the Vietnamese court to annex Khmer territory. The range of mountains that runs through Phnom Ro, between Nha Bang and Nui Cam remains home to several meditating hermits. Local monks say a hermit is found on each of the rocky peaks that make up this low-slung range. Some reside in their own small worship hall or preah vihear. These hermits cannot easily be seen by people who venture onto the peaks. They can render themselves invisible on volition. Only people with great merit or destined affinity can see them. Long ago the body of one of these meditating hermits turned to stone. His stone form can be discerned on a rocky outcrop nearby Wat Ro. The site of Wat Ro itself was selected by a ta eisey. While seated in a meditative trance on a faraway mountain, the hermit’s spirit travelled far and wide. Coming to the site of the present-day temple, he determined it would make an ideal site for meditation. After returning to his body he set out for Phnom Ro and worked to build up a temple at its base.

Life between Mountain and Floodplain We can understand how Khmer people made a home for themselves in these mountains by taking a closer look at the districts of Sva Ton and Krabao (Tri Ton and Tinh Bien) where the Khmer population is especially concentrated. The peaks cluster in an area extending about 40 kilometres from north to south and 15 kilometres from east to west. Some are freestanding, but most are connected by rocky spurs. In fact, all are joined together at their bases by erosion effects. Weathering has caused the rock to erode and soil washed from the slopes has deposited at the foot of each mountain, creating a platform of soil that encircles its base, known to geologists as an alluvial apron. In places, the alluvial apron is only a few hundred metres wide, although in some areas it extends for more than four kilometres from the foot of the mountain. The alluvial aprons around each mountain have fused together, forming broad plateaus that



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stretch between the peaks, and a continuous platform of elevated soil that runs around the entire massif. This platform of eroded earth forms the principal basis for human settlement in the Sva Ton–Krabao area. Its elevation is critical, being the only land in the region apart from the slopes themselves to remain above the waterline year round. Yet its incline is gentle enough and its expanse sufficiently broad to sustain sizeable agrarian settlements. Khmer people built their houses atop the alluvial apron, in the intermediary zone between the high water mark and the foot of the mountains. Until the late 1950s, the majority of houses were built on hardwood stilts, the wood for which was harvested from the forests of the mountain slopes. However, even this traditional technology did not permit people to live in the periodically flooded area beyond the alluvial apron. According to elderly Khmer residents, the primary purpose of the stilt house was to protect inhabitants from wild animals. Historically, households were scattered in groups of three or more across the expanse of the alluvial apron. Residents born in the 1930s explained that houses were grouped together to permit resource sharing and provide collective security from bandits. Several households belonging to the one extended family would form a stockaded compound, or phum. Each compound had a few fruit trees, a haystack, a stockade for cows and horses, and storage space for agricultural equipment. In the early 1960s, this dispersed settlement pattern disappeared as the population was concentrated into a limited number of residential neighbourhoods generally in close proximity to a wat and a major road. In many places one can still clearly make out the contours of the former settlement clusters ( phum pi daem), since the trees that surrounded them were not cut down. The tree roots hold the soil in place while the exposed soil of the surrounding rice terraces has eroded away over the course of some 50 years. Today, these thickly vegetated abandoned hamlet sites stand a metre or higher above the alluvial apron. The remaining land on the alluvial apron was cleared of jungle and given over to agriculture. Rice terraces occupy most of the space on the alluvial slopes. The terraces in this region are broad and built on shallow gradients. They stretch for kilometres beyond the bases of some mountains, the valleys between sculpted into a continuous array of gentle steps. Rice grown on the alluvial apron was called srau leu (high rice), not because of its height—the stalks were

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Plate 5.1 Cattle grazing on the rice terraces during the dry season

1.2 metres tall at most—but to distinguish it from the rice grown down in the floodplain. Many species of srau leu traditionally were cultivated, all rainfed. Rainwater was trapped in broad pans behind the terrace walls ( pleu). The rice had a growing season ranging from five to seven months. Ploughing began in June after the rains had softened the ground. Cow manure was used to fertilise the terraces. The harvest was at the end of the rainy season, in December or January. During the dry season, some terraces were turned over to legumes, melons and squash, while most were used to graze cattle (Plate 5.1). Chamkar orchards and fields are situated on the high ground near the foot of the mountains. In these steep un-terraced slopes, Khmer farmers have long cultivated fruit trees, including mangoes, jackfruit, cashews and bananas, as well as ground crops such as cassava, sweet potato, maize, legumes, gourds, cucumber and leafy vegetables. Tobacco once was grown widely at the base of the mountains and elderly people still chew plugs of tobacco, although the crop largely has been taken over by cassava which is now grown in



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large quantities for export. A familiar sight on the alluvial apron is the sugar palm, daem thnaot, grown in groves and along the raised edges of the rice terraces. During the dry season, Khmer men daily climb ladders to the crowns of the trees armed with a knife and plastic buckets to tap the sap. The sweet sap harvested from this versatile tree is drunk and processed into caked sugar and alcohol; the fruit is eaten; the leaves are used for thatch and fire fuel; and the hardwood trunks are used in furniture and house construction. From their advantageous location atop the alluvial apron, Khmer residents were well situated to exploit the resources of the floodplain beyond it. Until the early 1980s, when flood control measures greatly reduced the height of inundations, floating rice (srau laeng tuk or srau beng) was grown on the seasonally flooded flatland. This variety has stalks with the capacity to grow quickly to whatever height the floodwaters reach, which used to be up to three metres in places.6  It was sown in May and harvested only after the floodwaters had abated in January, when the heads of rice were separated from the long stalks that lay prone on the ground. During the flood season, fish abounded and were trapped with nets. Crabs once were so plentiful that they were collected and sold for an income. When the floodwaters had receded and the rice had been harvested, cattle were led out onto the floodplain to graze the rice stubble.7  In the dry season, cowherds caught fish and gathered wild grasses and rushes from the hollows on the floodplain that remained filled with water (Plate 5.2). The forested slopes above each settlement contained a wealth of resources that were equally as vital to people’s existence. Every day men, women and children could be found at the edge of the forest collecting brushwood for cooking. Several species of hardwoods grew on the slopes that were used in house and temple construction. Hunters roamed the slopes trapping or spearing bush pigs, goats, deer, snakes, lizards, rabbits and birds. Many elderly men still have tattoos to protect them from attack by dangerous forest creatures from those times. People visited the forest to inspect the condition of jackfruit and mango trees and would return to gather their fruit when in season. The slopes were scoured for the many varieties of roots, tubers, vines, fungi and insects that were utilised in food and medicine. To this day, Khmer mountainside dwellers are renowned for their ability to find rare plants that are esteemed for their potency as herbal medicines.

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Plate 5.2 Floodplain activities November 2009

Figure 5.1   Pre-war land-use patterns in the flooded mountains



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As has been noted, residential and agricultural activities are concentrated on the alluvial apron because until recently it was the only land that remained dry enough year round to engage in them. At the same time, residence in this location solved the equally critical problem of water scarcity. Sva Ton and Krabao receive less rainfall and experience a longer arid season than southern areas of the Mekong Delta. Once the floodwaters retreat, the springs, la an, that spout from the slopes contain the only surface water to be found in the mountainous area, however, most are so small that they dry up soon after the rains cease. Groundwater is found beneath the floodplain but it is too acidic to drink and is considered harmful to animal and plant life. During the dry season, the sole source of water accessible to most residents is found in the alluvial apron itself. This water falls as rain, runs down the mountainside, and percolates into the sandy soil of the alluvial apron where it is retained year round. This subsoil water allows trees on the alluvial slopes to survive for months without watering. It also is the primary source of drinking water for residents of the mountainside villages. The water is accessed by puncturing the surface of the alluvial apron and extracting the water underneath. Members of neighbouring households band together to dig wells, andon tuk, for collective use. The rocky soil close to the mountainside makes the construction of wells much harder than in any other Khmer-populated region in Vietnam, but when they are complete, the stone-lined wells are deeper, more solid and longer lasting than similar wells elsewhere. Well use often is restricted to members of an extended family but in many instances neighbourhood groups consisting of 30 or more households share the same well. These neighbourhood wells are still in active use. The water is drawn out using a bucket suspended on a rope and is clear and sweet. It is used for drinking, cooking, washing, horticulture and watering livestock. However, this groundwater is not uniformly abundant. One ten-metre deep stone-lined well in O Lam is extremely busy. It supplies upwards of 100 families with clean sweet water throughout the year. Another of similar depth located about five kilometres away on the same side of the mountain sustains the needs of just five households and dries up for two to three months each year. Wells located out on the alluvial apron, away from the mountainside, tend to dry up earlier than those close by the slopes and their water

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becomes sour in the dry season. Long before the rains arrive in May, a great number of wells in individual extended-family compounds and neighbourhoods have run dry. At that point, people have to go to the communal water source for their drinking, cooking and bathing needs, and traditionally, the most important of these were found in the wats. Several wats are located by natural springs that bubble from the base of the mountain, others beside a small stream that flows between mountain spurs. These water sources are often dammed to make a bathing pond or else channelled along bamboo pipes or stone-lined channels into a holding reservoir. Some wats have extremely deep wells that laypeople have dug into the alluvial apron with great effort. A variety of locally occurring materials have been used to seal these wells and prevent their sand walls from collapsing.8  Several wats have wells of no great depth that fortunately are positioned atop a sweet spot, where the water flows year round. These collective water sources were created by people affiliated to each temple and continue to be used to this day. The contemporary importance of these communal reserves is evident in the steady stream of people that enters the temple grounds in which they are located to collect water for their household needs. In the past, nearly all wats in this region also had large clayor stone-lined ponds, or sras, which were used to catch and retain rainwater for communal use during the dry season. Several of these are still in active use. They were especially important in villages located out on the alluvial apron, far from the springs at the base of the mountains. One example is the sras in Wat Krang Kroch in the commune of Chau Lang. It is in the middle of a broad plateau ringed by mountains. Villagers said that even if one were to dig 50 metres into the clay soil beneath their wat, one would not reach water. The sras is about 17 metres square and 6 metres deep. It is covered with lotus lilies and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Its banks are earthen except for the corner from which people draw water, which is sealed with stone. The sras was dug by villagers. Each would dig out a cubic metre or so of earth. This was the water source used by the people of Krang Kroch village in the dry season. It also was used by people of surrounding villages when the sras in their wats had dried up. It was especially in demand in the New Year’s festival period, when it was in use 24 hours a day. At any given time, day or night, there would be someone drawing water



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Plate 5.3 Stone-lined sras in a temple in Tinh Bien

from the sras. It was used until it dried up and was only recharged when the rains came. The commune of Chau Lang is also the site of one of the most remarkable instances of collective water sharing in the mountainous region. Until recently members of five separate villages all drew their drinking water from a single well at the southern end of Phnom Veng in Srolon Village. This well is thought to be up to 60 metres deep. It taps into a permanent mountain spring (mac tuk). Its water is as sweet as rainwater and runs year round. No one is sure when it was dug. Elderly men in their eighties, told me that it was already there when they were born and their own grandparents had told them that it was there when they were born too, so they estimated, it might be 200 years old. The well is centrally located between the cluster of villages that rely upon it. It creates a water confederation out of the people of the southwestern end of this plateau. These forms of collective water gathering were universal in this region until the mid-2000s, when state-supplied drinking water became available. The state water supply system uses water from the

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river, which is treated at a purification and pumping station on the road to Long Xuyen and is piped to most settlements in the mountainous massif. However, for various reasons, the state water supply has not supplanted pre-existing collective water-gathering practices. One reason is that the pipes have yet to reach all the rural hamlets and the region is subject to frequent electricity blackouts that stop the water pumps and require locals to keep traditional water sources as a back-up. The high cost of state-supplied water also deters many from using it. Perhaps the most important reason to reject the state sponsored water is the widespread mistrust of the water from the river that is chemically treated and runs through mechanical pumps and pipes. State-supplied water is seen as “hot”, contaminated and unhealthy and in most locales it is compared unfavourably to well water. Although often cloudy and hard, local groundwater is considered the purest and sweetest water there is.

Mountainside Modernity and Connection Khmer people’s reliance on local water supplies is part of a generalised pattern of resource self-sufficiency. One explanation for this pattern is that the rich array of resources that are available in this region makes it possible to obtain most necessities of life locally. Between the slopes of the nearest mountain and the edge of the floodplain, residents have long been able to procure almost everything they have needed to live comfortably year round, a situation enabling subsistence security and encouraging self-sufficiency. One still can discern this pattern of localised self-sufficiency even in a contemporary setting characterised by motorised transportation, commodity markets, schools and factory employment. In daily journeys undertaken to cut firewood on the mountain slopes, draw water from a well, catch frogs in the watercourses, pick fruit and vegetables from gardens, tend rice terraces, or provision an active palm wine still, many locals often will venture no further than a kilometre from home. To this day, the only markets in this region are in the administrative centres and pilgrimage sites. Most Khmer residents rely upon ambulatory merchants who sell goods from house to house from the back of a bicycle. They also purchase ingredients for a meal from a smallgoods stall operated out of the front room of a neighbour’s house.



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Vietnamese who live in the mountains sometimes attribute these livelihood practices to the fact that Khmers have had no better options, since sealed roads, electricity and schools have been introduced only recently. The more common explanation, however, is that their Khmer neighbours are primitives, who remain immune to modernisation. One of the most frequent comments I have heard is that Khmers just live day to day, collecting what they require for their immediate needs, happy to consume whatever animals and plants they find in the forest, and never making provision for the future by improving their land, saving their earnings or studying new techniques. They also are said to be insular and mistrustful, living together in groups and never going anywhere without a weapon such as a knife or an axe tucked into their waistband. Unlike the Khmers of the lower delta, who have long lived alongside the Chinese—from whom they are supposed to have picked up knowledge about agricultural techniques, hygiene, modern clothing styles and trade—local Khmers, the Vietnamese assert, have been cut off from civilising influences. Such comments reflect ethnic arrogance but also a strong dose of romanticism, for many of these settlers idealise life in the mountains, which they claim to be cooler, less crowded, closer to nature and simpler, in comparison with the complicated, competitive and bustling cities of the southern plain. However, these notions of Khmer autarchy misrepresent the local situation. Khmers in this region have for generations reared cattle both for agricultural work and trade. Several Khmer families specialise in the cattle trading business and have extensive dealings with buyers from localities outside the massif. Many also specialise in renting groves of sugar palms and manufacturing and trading products from this tree. Additionally, Khmers of this mountainous region long have been connected into a number of trading networks. Chinese traders and creditors, based in Tri Ton market and surrounding villages provided consumer goods on credit, in payment for which Khmers provided a part of their rice harvest and products collected from the forest. Cham Muslim traders bring goods from the cross-border markets on the Bassac River and travel through the mountain massif selling goods from house to house. Both groups use Khmer to speak with their local trade partners. Khmers also are the principal suppliers of the herbal medicine for which the mountains are renowned. They gather ingredients from the mountain slopes and

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Map 5.1   Distribution of Khmer wats on the alluvial apron, An Giang

sell them to plains-based wholesalers as well as to local stallholders who serve the huge number of pilgrims who come to these mountains each year.9  Khmers also have taught and inspired the various mystics, healers and herbal doctors who have long taken up residence in these mountains (Do 2003; Nguyen and Pivar 2004). Khmers in this region are also connected to each other socially, most clearly through their religious institutions. The wats in this region are closely spaced; no site on the alluvial apron is more than three kilometres from a wat. One factor that explains the spacing of wats is their role in the collection, storage and supply of water



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for communal needs. Another is their traditional function as centres for schooling, life-cycle rites and seasonal festivals. These communal institutions, which are the basis for village formation, are situated wherever a substantial number of people live. They cluster at the edge of the floodplain; in the wide reaches between mountain spurs; and in the broad plateaus between the mountains. With the exception of a handful of wats on rocky outcrops, all are built on the alluvial apron. Where the alluvial apron is narrow, and settlement strings around the base of the mountain, wats are spaced evenly along the string, like pearls on a necklace. A vivid example of this pattern is found around Phnom Kto. Residences encircle its base in a continuous 20-kilometre loop. This settlement loop is segmented into some 18 villages, each with its own wat. One can identify the extent of the social catchment area served by each wat on the vow-keeping days (thngay sel ) that occur four times a month. On these days shaved-headed elderly laymen and women who observe eight vows dress neatly in white tunics and sarongs and walk to the nearest wat, carrying containers of food to make offerings to the monks. Early in the morning, household elders leave their individual houses and make their way along sandy tracks that wind through their residential neighbourhood. They file along a lane or road that leads through fields and gardens towards the wat. At the gates to the wat several streams converge, arriving from different directions. Once inside the sala chan, or offering hall, the vow holders spend time chanting, arranging and offering food to the monks, and then consuming a common meal from what remains of the offerings. In the late morning the elders return home the way they came. Such days make evident the role of the wat as an institution that links a host of dispersed households and neighbourhoods into a religious community. They also make visible the physical pathways that allow more encompassing social networks to form. Paths of coarse-grained sand connect neighbourhoods to temples. Others also connect houses with gardens and wells, link up neighbourhoods, and join adjacent villages to each other. These inter-village paths follow the contours of the alluvial apron, staying well above the high water mark. Now mostly sealed, these routes join all the settlements around the base of a mountain to each other. In several places by the side of the road laypersons have set up a rest house, talah, and a well for

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Plate 5.4 Horse-drawn cart, Tri Ton

travellers to take respite. Each mountain is ringed with its own system of tracks and roads. The roads around neighbouring mountains intersect each other, forming a chain pattern. In consequence, the entire massif is integrated by a mesh of roads and paths that joins every residence to the others in the region. This land-based transport network was for a long time the only one of its kind in the western delta, whose endemic floods have made the boat such a remarked-upon staple of local and longdistance transport. It has enabled the evolution of two modes of land transport that are highly developed and remain distinctive to the mountainous region: the cattle-drawn wagon, for transporting heavy produce, and the horse-drawn cart, for more rapid transport of goods and people (Plate 5.4). Despite the introduction of intervillage bus services and the popularity of motorbikes, these forms of animal-drawn transport are still common, owing to the fact that horses and cattle are abundant, easy to maintain and cheaper than mechanised transport. An annual cow racing carnival is held in the tenth month during the pchum ben ancestor festival, as the floodwaters begin to peak. Standing atop an improvised sled yoked to



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a pair of powerful bulls, contestants from different mountainside villages are pulled at breakneck speed through sloppy mud. The races symbolise the importance of these animals to agrarian life in this region. In the past, elders recall, they were held intermittently at three temples that had enough land to stage the race. People with a good cow from hamlets all over the massif came to the temples to race it. Today the venue alternates each year between one of two temples. The mountains are home to several other cultural elaborations that distinguish them from other Khmer-settled areas of the Mekong Delta. The Sva Ton–Krabao area is the one place in Kampuchea Krom where the sarong still is common attire. Beautifully patterned sarongs and blouses are worn regularly by community members at ritual functions and by elderly women as mark of their status. Many households operate looms for weaving rugs, scarves and sarongs which are sold at temple festivals. Gold ornaments, such as conical ear studs, neck chains and teeth fillings, also are more prominent here than in other localities, as are tattoos and amulets. These features, plus the prevalence of culturally iconic thnaot palm trees suggest to Khmers in the eastern delta that this area has almost fully retained its traditional cultural identity. But at the same time they raise suspicions that the area is insular and has yet to be modernised. Compared with the eastern delta, the monastic education system appears to be underdeveloped. There are few vernacular schools and Khmer literacy is not very widespread. Most monks confine their educational efforts to learning Pali chants. However, local abbots observe that monks in this region know more chants than their counterparts in the east, and the chants that they memorise also tend to be much longer. Some 17 wats affiliated to Cambodia’s Thommayut order are found in this mountainous region (most are in Krabao), the only place in Vietnam where this order exists. Locals observe that the Thommayut order is associated with royalty, and originates from the wandering forest monk tradition patronised by the Thai kings. Considered more conservative than the dominant Mahanikay order, Thommayut monks knot their robes rather than letting them hang free and cannot handle money. Yet two of the main local temples that provide an education in Khmer, Pali and Buddhism at elementary school level, Wat Srolon and Wat Thommit, both belong to the Thommayut order. As a whole, this complex of mountainside settlements appears isolated: the entire massif cut off by water for months each year and

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separated from Cambodia by the border. But in fact, to look just at the 64 villages within Vietnamese territory is to miss a bigger picture. The mountains at whose bases they stand belong within a chain of granite peaks that extends west into Takeo Province in Cambodia. Each mountain in this chain within Cambodia similarly is surrounded annually by floodwaters, whose depth can reach three metres. Settlement in flood-prone Kirivong District, Takeo, concentrates almost exclusively atop the alluvial apron around the base of these mountains. Land use regimes and livelihoods in villages on the Cambodian side of the border are identical to those on the Vietnamese side. In Kirivong, floating rice traditionally was grown on the floodplain. The alluvial aprons around each mountain are covered with gently stepped terraces for growing rainfed rice. Thnaot trees grow along the terrace bunds. Fruit trees and ground crops are cultivated in chamkar fields on higher land by the foot of the mountains. The mountain slopes are covered in orchards and secondary forest. A variety of plant resources on the mountaintop are gathered for food, firewood and medicine. As in Vietnam, the mountains on the Cambodian side of the border are encircled by settlement loops that are segmented into a number of wat-based villages. In Kirivong, stilt houses are the predominant housing form; some houses are built of stone from mountainside quarries. Wealthy households have an array of large urns for collecting rainwater. Neighbourhoods share communal wells that tap water stored in the alluvial apron. The wat is the focal point for higher-level sociality. Tracks and roads run through the settled areas around the base of each mountain linking villages to each other. Cattle carts and horse-drawn wagons are used to transport agricultural products, forest resources and passengers. Markets mostly take the form of house-based smallgoods stalls and mobile traders who ferry their goods door-to-door using bicycles, motorbikes and carts. The roads that encircle the mountains reach across the alluvial aprons that join the mountains to each other. They connect the settlements that ring the base of each mountain to those around neighbouring mountains. Settlement in this borderlands region can be likened to a chain with multiple links that extends for some 70 kilometres across the border. The mountainside villages of the borderlands are also connected socially. Many residents of villages on each side of the border are related to each other and frequently cross it for family visits, life-cycle



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rites and seasonal festivals. Monks on either side of the border exchange visits, join forces at ceremonies and cross the border to pursue monastic studies. Monks from Sva Ton and Krabao find it easier to enter Cambodia to study than those from the eastern delta, but they often study in temples just inside the border rather than venturing “deeper” into Cambodia. The villages of the borderlands historically also were linked by two Khmer-dominated cross-border trading networks—the palm sugar trade and the cattle trade— which once accounted for much of the wealth of Khmer residents of this area.

Dividing the Mountains, Securing the Nation Although this mountainous region is ecologically coherent and socially integrated, its border-crossing status is anomalous with regards to the nationalist conception of space. During the second half of the twentieth century, the mountainside settlements were torn asunder as rival armies and governments clashed violently in the attempt to draw the mountains and their Khmer residents into different national orbits. The flood-encircled mountain range that straddles the border between Vietnam and Cambodia occupies a special position in the nationalist imaginaries of both countries. For Cambodian nationalists, the region is notorious as the site where Vietnamese mandarins in the early nineteenth century oversaw the digging of the Vinh Te Canal, which bisects the mountain range and to this day demarcates the border. Nationalists relate that Khmers in their thousands were used as forced labour to dig the canal. Those disobeying orders were reportedly buried to their necks and, gruesomely, their heads were used as cooking tripods on which their Vietnamese “masters” boiled tea. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the mountains on the Cambodian site of the border were among the earliest strongholds of the Khmer Rouge, who opposed the Cambodian central government and the Vietnamese with equal fervour. One of the most draconian and extremist exponents of this socially radical and xenophobic ideology, Ta Mok, made his base in the mountains of Cambodia’s southwest region. The massif has also been home to a lineage of Vietnamese millenarian movements that emerged in the context of French colonisation. Combining Buddhism, Confucian filial piety and loyalist

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identification with the pre-colonial Vietnamese state, the adepts of this tradition practised ritual austerity and healing and waited for the apocalypse in a region that until the end of the French colonial period was considered both remote and spiritually powerful. Several villages comprised of followers of the Tu An Hieu Nghia sect, founded in the mid-nineteenth century, are bunched at the southwestern extremity of the massif. A later representative of this ideologically eclectic millenarian tradition, Hoa Hao Buddhism, was founded in the 1930s. The demographic centre of the Hoa Hao faith and stronghold of its military forces was along the rivers and canals to the northeast of the mountains. However, the mountain massif was considered the movement’s symbolic and spiritual focal point. In the mid-twentieth century this region became militarily central to the national salvation projects of contending Vietnamese forces. During the French war (1945–54) Viet Minh troops used the mountains as a base to resist the French and to smuggle in arms and supplies from Thailand. Local Khmers were often drawn into supplying the communist-led resistance. Many also fought on both sides in the subsequent civil war. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Republic of Vietnam (1955–75) sought to sever links between the local population and the communist-led insurgency. Khmers in the region were forced to leave their small extended-family hamlets scattered across the alluvial apron and concentrate in a number of agrovilles, or strategic hamlets, away from the mountainsides and their fields and gardens. These urban formations with street grids, sanitation and drinking water systems and Vietnamese schools allowed the government to monitor and assimilate the Khmers while freeing up the vacated areas for military operations. Abbots and monks who were suspected of providing refuge to the “Viet Cong” were expelled from their wats, many fleeing to Cambodia. Several wats were destroyed in bombing operations and others were taken over as bases by South Vietnamese soldiers.10  NLF military units found refuge on most mountains, save Phnom Pol Pia, and from the early 1960s, these sanctuaries were heavily bombed by the US air force, putting the mountains off-limits to Khmer residents until 1975. Another effect of the wars was the decimation of the local animal population. One resident of Phnom Kto, born in the early 1930s, recalled that in his youth, chamkar orchards of cashews, mangoes and bamboo were cultivated on the hillside above his house, but



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did not extend to the top of the mountain because people were afraid of the wild animals: There were tigers (klaa), jungle pigs (chrouk prey), wild goats (slung) and a very large number of monkeys (sva). People weren’t afraid of the monkeys. They were a nuisance: they ate fruit and generally stole or destroyed property. During the war, guns became a lot more common, guerrillas were based in the hills and a lot of animals were shot. By war’s end, in 1975, two thirds of the animals had disappeared. The last tiger disappeared about 20 years earlier. It was killed during the French war—shot by guerrillas.

After a few months of peace, the mountains became a battleground in the Cambodia–Vietnam border war of the late 1970s. From their bases in the mountains of southwest Cambodia, Khmer Rouge troops repeatedly shelled and staged attacks on settlements across the border, killing Khmer and Vietnamese residents alike. In 1978 Khmer Rouge troops, including rifle-bearing children, swarmed across the border overrunning some 20 Khmer settlements on the western half of the massif. The troops occupied Phnom Tuk (Ba Chuc) for over a week—in most other places they retreated after only one day —forcing at gunpoint thousands of Khmers to follow them back to Cambodia. These abductees were compelled to take part in canal digging, road building and communal agriculture mostly in the southwest zone provinces of Takeo, Kep and Kampot. They were constantly marched from place to place and given inadequate shelter and food rations. By the time the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea fell in early 1979, a great many of these abductees had died, mostly of starvation and disease.11  In September 1978, prior to its own counter-invasion and occupation of Cambodia, the Vietnamese military reciprocated by removing all of the surviving Khmer population from this border area. Most were relocated to Hau Giang Province in the eastern Mekong Delta and were given minimal supplies to set up houses, dig canals and open up agricultural land in areas referred to as New Economic Zones. The living conditions in this unfamiliar environment were harsh and crude and most displaced Khmers were not able to grow enough to eat. After a year or so they were allowed to return home.

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For a year or so the mountains were almost completely devoid of Khmer residents. Rival armies had removed them in order to deprive their enemies of access to this border-dwelling population. In the interim, a host of Vietnamese migrants arrived into the area, mostly from urban centres in An Giang Province. Some were officially recruited to open up for agriculture the flooded lowlands surrounding the mountains but a great many were spontaneous migrants who took over “waste” lands unwillingly vacated by Khmers in between and around the mountains and on the slopes. Motivated by desperation during the economic crisis of the late 1970s and the 1980s the new migrants colonised the slopes during this period, cut down and sold the remaining large trees, and captured for consumption the last wild animals. Khmers who survived the mass relocation eventually returned to find their homes and temples had been ransacked while they were away, and farmlands occupied by opportunistic newcomers. Khmers in the western half of the massif were most seriously undermined by these developments. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge mass abductions, returning home after years in Cambodia, were accused of being Khmer Rouge sympathisers. To this day, most have recovered less than half of the land taken from them during their absence.12  A great many Khmers lost access to their former chamkar lands during these events, and to the mountain slopes, which were appropriated by newcomers and enclosed as private holdings. Most of the original residents of settlements along the western flanks of several mountains, including Phnom Polpia, Phnom Veng and Phnom Ro have never regained access to their former orchards and forest stands at the base of the mountain and on the slopes. Dispossessed landowners have organised petitions and protest marches to obtain compensation or reclaim their land, but they have been harshly repressed by Commune-level administrators, many of whom have benefitted personally from these post-1975 land and population transfers. The legally recognised occupants of former Khmer-owned chamkar orchards often justify their entitlement to the land by claiming that Khmers lack the aptitude to have ever practised sophisticated cultivation of this type. Subsequently, agricultural intensification, infrastructure and economic development programmes have transformed the lives of Khmer residents of this locality. Flood control measures, including dykes and canals from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, gradually brought an



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Plate 5.5 Khmer man harvesting a thnaot tree owned by a Vietnamese landlord

end to the floods, and to floating rice. New rice breeds were introduced with a shorter growing season and higher productivity. In some parts of the former floodplain Khmer farmers can grow three crops of rice per year. In the mid-1990s, the local authorities constructed concrete aqueducts on the alluvial apron for dry-season irrigation of newly introduced short-season rice varieties. Water is pumped from canals in the lowlands and channelled through the aqueducts, which are positioned mid way up the alluvial slopes between the base of the mountains and the floodplain. The water cascades downhill through the terraces allowing two rice crops per year to be grown. However, the new approach to rice production and other intensive forms of agriculture are highly labour intensive and, owing to high input costs, they frequently return a loss. The contemporary model of agriculture relies on commercially obtained fertiliser rather than cow dung. Local people regard chemically fertilised crops as less tasty and wholesome than the traditionally fertilised varieties.13 

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The new varieties demand the heavy use of pesticide, which is both expensive and contaminates various plants and animal species that Khmers still rely upon to supplement their diet. Marketisation of the economy has allowed Khmers to earn an income from export crops, however, at the same time, continuous expenditures are required to buy food that no longer is grown locally, send children to school, meet medical costs, and purchase motorbikes, fuel, electricity and water. To raise money to meet their debts a great many Khmers sell off their land piece by piece. These processes, in which marketdriven displacement overlays earlier waves of military displacement have left many Khmers landless and working as hired labourers on their former land, which increasingly is owned by Vietnamese absentee landowners. Khmer elders report that as soon as local youths reach working age, the majority of them now leave the area altogether to seek employment in the businesses and factories of southeast Vietnam. Meanwhile urban centres in the region have swollen with Vietnamese administrators along with town-dwellers who have set up commercial outlets in the towns and along newly sealed roads of this commercially thriving border region. The service towns have attracted traders who use them as a base for lucrative cross-border smuggling. Operations to mine stone from the mountains mostly employ Vietnamese migrant labourers, while a large military base is home to thousands of non-Khmer-speaking soldiers. Intensifying religious tourism to sacred sites in the mountains has led to the rapid expansion of service centres and religious institutions all around the massif, which cater solely to Vietnamese-speaking pilgrims and Vietnam-centric sensibilities. In combination, these processes have drawn the mountainside villages firmly into a Vietnamese sociocultural orbit. Today the mountainside region is home to a mixed VietnameseKhmer population. As a result of military and market-induced population transfers many Khmers are disoriented. Several youths I have met, whose parents were relocated during military conflicts, do not know in which village or country they or their parents were born. In Van Giao which, in 1975 had just a handful of Vietnamesespeaking residents, Vietnamese now prevails as the language of trade, administration and intercultural communication. Many monasteries have only five or fewer monks and fewer than five wats in the region offer a basic level of the monastic curriculum. Khmer literacy rates



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are very low. The majority of Khmer youths attend Vietnamese schools and Khmer literacy classes held in temples for children during the school holidays are sparsely attended. In turn the children of Vietnamese migrants learn a modicum of spoken Khmer picked up in classes, in the playground, and at temple festivals. However, like most of their Khmer neighbours, their capacity in written Khmer is limited.14 

Incorporated Yet Distinct Despite these far-reaching changes, the lives of the Khmers of this region retain much of their distinct character. As in the past, they continue to draw upon a combination of resources from the base of the mountains, the alluvial apron and the floodplain. The rice terraces remain in active use, some still rainfed, others now irrigated from aqueducts. While the floodwaters have been controlled, Khmer still grow rice on the floodplain. Although the forested slopes have been enclosed and taken over by owners who mostly hail from other localities, some Khmers have managed to secure private holdings atop the mountains. Other Khmer residents find low-paid work cutting firewood on the slopes and gathering forest resources to supply the pilgrimage and traditional medicine trades. Shaped by wars and state intervention, the grid-like urban concentrations in which most Khmers today live are novel, however, they remain atop the alluvial apron and continue to be divided into neighbourhoods made up of extended-family compounds. Although the population has been dramatically re-organised, most residents still attend the same temple their parents went to, and in which their ancestors’ ashes are deposited. Although some communal wells have been contaminated by pesticides and their water clouded by quarrying, many wells still remain in active use as the most trusted and cost-effective source of fresh water. Cattle- and horse-drawn carts share the roads with motorcycles and trucks, and the cow has not ceded pre-eminence to the buffalo or the tractor as the preferred means for ploughing fields on the alluvial apron. At the same time, Khmer residents have maintained strong links with residents of mountainside villages on the Cambodian side of the border. Journeys to temples across the border for monastic studies, festivals and religious ceremonies are commonplace. Over the last ten years, I have encountered in temples in Vietnam an

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increasing number of traders and visitors who travel there by motorcycle from Cambodia. Peace and the growing market economy have allowed the resurgence of the cross-border cattle trade, while pilgrimages and tourism have given a stimulus to sugar palm production and the collection and production of herbal medicines on both sides of the border. Less controlled than their counterparts in the eastern Mekong Delta, the majority of Khmer temples in the mountainside villages have satellite dishes to pick up Cambodian television channels. Household-based life-cycle celebrations and temple festivals frequently feature Cambodian musical recordings smuggled from across the border. Khmers living in the east tend to view the mountainous border as an exotic locale where Khmers still wear sarongs, live in stilt houses and engage in unique ritual practices and sectarian affiliations. Literacy levels are low—theirs is still an oral culture—and tattooing and sorcery reputedly are rife. I recall in the late 1990s being told by a monk from Tra Vinh that Khmers of the Sva Ton area were constantly fighting with Vietnamese because they were severely oppressed, but also because they were not enlightened, and knew nothing except looking for food, sleeping and drinking. These conceptions of Khmers of the mountains as traditional, insular and primitive, are not so different from those shared by government officials, or many Vietnamese who have made their homes in the mountains. Today Khmers from this region are being drawn into educational networks that position Preah Trapeang (Tra Vinh) and Khleang (Soc Trang) as the civilisational centre for the Khmers of southern Vietnam. Whereas formerly monks from the mountainside villages might travel to monasteries in Cambodia for higher-level study, many are now undertaking secondary and tertiary Buddhist studies in monasteries in the eastern delta, particularly in Preah Trapeang. Such contradictory views and developments pull the Khmer residents of this flood-bound mountainous region in competing directions, albeit not with the high levels of violence that marked these processes in the twentieth century. As a result, the identity of this once semi-autonomous Khmer region remains in flux. Nevertheless, also because of the unique constellation of influences to which the Khmers of this border area are subject, their mountainous homeland is likely to retain its status as a culturally distinctive locality within the wider Khmer-speaking world.



Oceanside Mountains: Nature and Subsidence Between Swamp and Sea

6 Oceanside Mountains: Nature and Subsidence Between Swamp and Sea Once there lived a beautiful princess, called Neang Pu, who was abducted from her palace by the King of the Bats and imprisoned in a deep mountain cave. Her distraught father, the Khmer king, offered as a reward his kingdom and his daughter’s hand to whoever rescued her. The person who came to the rescue was Thach Sanh, a humble hunter, who lived in a hut in the forest. Brave and strong, he once had subdued a tiger with his bare hands. Thach Sanh set out for the cave of the Bat King accompanied by his adoptive older brother, Ly Thong. With courage and skill, Thach Sanh lowered himself by rope deep into the cave. Finding the princess, he tied the rope around her waist and asked Ly Thong to draw her up out of the cave. Once he had done so, Ly Thong departed with the princess, leaving Thach Sanh behind to his fate. Ly Thong returned to the palace with the princess, falsely claiming that it was he who had rescued her, and obtaining her hand in marriage. Meanwhile, trapped in the cave, Thach Sanh met the daughter of the Naga King. She helped him escape to her father’s realm that lay beneath the ocean. After a sojourn in the Naga kingdom, Thach Sanh returned to land armed with magical gifts from the Naga King, which he used to prevail over his rival and defend the Khmer kingdom from attack by its enemies. Thach Sanh was recognised as the true rescuer of the princess, whom he married. His evil adoptive brother was 191

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executed. Some versions of the story relate that Ly Thong was seized retributively by the Bat King, who dropped him into the ocean where he turned into a shark.

The tale of Thach Sanh and Ly Thong has long been a favourite children’s story in Vietnam and is known to elderly Khmers and Vietnamese alike. This is an abbreviated version of the tale told by senior Khmer monks in the coastal province of Kramuon Sor, known in Vietnamese as Kien Giang. The story offers a depiction of the morally perilous plight of the Khmers, represented by Thach Sanh, who confronts trickery from dishonest allies, represented by his Chinese- or Vietnamese-named older brother, Ly Thong. Bravery, skill and honesty distinguish the tale’s hero from the scheming imposter Ly Thong who meets a bad end, while Thach Sanh goes on to inherit the earthly kingdom. The story is set in a geographically distinctive region that stretches along the northern coastline of the Gulf of Thailand between Cambodia and Vietnam. The 100-kilometre-long coastal strip between the port towns of Ha Tien (Peam) and Rach Gia (Psar Reachea) is one of the most sparsely populated of Vietnam’s Khmersettled regions. Today it is home to scarcely 20 wat-based settlements, the majority of them in close proximity to the coast. Pressed between a vast swamp to the north and the sea to the south, the coastal strip is dotted with forested limestone mountains with evocative names such as Ocean Fragrance Mountain and Tamarind River Mountain. This range of mountains constitutes the backbone of a unique Khmer-populated region that lies between the swamps and the sea. The events of the tale take place amidst the features of the coastal fringe: forests, oceans, human settlements, and deep limestone caves recessed into oceanside mountains. Multiple stratified realms are evoked, the aerial domain of the Bat King, the undersea world of the Naga King and, between them, the earthly realm, which is home both to human kings and lowly forest hunters. Thach Sanh, the Khmer hero of the tale, moves between land and sea, forest and palace via a cave, a liminal space between these realms and also a doorway between them. He alone is home in all of these realms, able to travel between them and secure alliances with their respective sovereigns. The tale succinctly evokes the situation of the Khmers of



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the coastal fringe, who live amidst forested mountains between land and sea, depending for their wellbeing on each of these domains. This chapter describes how Khmers have made a home for themselves along the northwest shoreline of the Gulf of Thailand. It demonstrates the crucial importance of the narrow band of high coastal land that abuts the sea, both as a site for residence and as a natural water reservoir in a region where fresh water is critically scarce. From this position, Khmers have been able to derive benefits by exploiting the abundant natural resources found in the sea, swamps and forested mountain slopes. They are connected by land and water to each other and to localities elsewhere in Vietnam and Cambodia, and have participated in trade and other exchanges with people from a great variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. However, the security of their tenure in this unique locality has been threatened in recent decades by unrestrained resource extraction practices that literally are undermining the foundations upon which the Khmer presence in this region long has been based.

Between the Swamp and the Sea The coastal fringe is a slender causeway that divides two great bodies of water. To its north is a vast depression that until recently was inundated for most of the year. This is the open floodplain over which water escaping from the Bassac River pours as it makes its way towards the Gulf of Thailand. Much of this depression is covered by permanent swamps, flooded forests and seasonally inundated grasslands that stretch all the way to the coast. With the exception of a few small Khmer-inhabited mountains that are scattered inland, the only dry land in this large swampy depression are the banks of canals, most of which were dredged, under state sponsorship, in the latter half of the twentieth century. To the southern side of the coastal peaks lies the sea. Khmer residents of the coastal fringe relate stories about sailors who were saved from drowning by whales. One concerns a dragon, or naga, that saved a sinking boat by swimming under it and spitting up water to support the boat as it made its way back to shore. Another is told about the bad end befalling a lovelorn fisherman who had sexual relations with a mermaid. While out fishing he spotted a beautiful creature who was half-woman and half-fish. He was cold

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and lonely out on the ocean. So he seized her, dragged her into his boat and made love with her. Later, on returning to shore, his penis began to smell and then it slowly rotted away. These legends reveal that the sea is integral to local Khmer livelihoods but also situate the ocean at the margins of human life. Numerous forested islands off the coast are inhabited, mostly by fishing and crabbing families who use them for permanent or seasonal residence. Sailors from the mainland use the islands to rest, take refuge in storms or collect water. The islands of the Gulf of Thailand long have been a port of call for Malay, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese sailors, navies, traders and pirates. Khmers, who are not renowned for their maritime prowess, also have colonised islands that lie a considerable distance from the mainland. Khmers reside on the largest island, Koh Traal, or Phu Quoc, where they maintain several Theravada Buddhist temples. Khmers also take mythic possession of islands, as evidenced by the tale about Thmo Kontum, a pair of rock formations off the coast of Kien Luong District: Hundreds of years ago, on Phu Tu (Father and Child) Island, there lived a Khmer father and son. They were fishermen. One day father and son went out to sea, about two kilometres from shore. That night there was a huge storm which sank their boat and in the end killed both father and son. After they died, they turned into stone. The father turned into a rock about ten metres in height, and the son turned into a smaller rock which was then called Child Rock. Father Rock collapsed around three years ago.1 

As the most significant landforms south of the Bassac River, the mountains of the coastal fringe constitute an attractive site for human habitation. It is primarily around these high and dry landforms that the Khmer population resides. Khmer people inhabit the alluvial aprons at the base of each mountain, whose gentle inclines and soft soil are favourable for residence and agriculture. Settlement extends in a continuous loop around the large coastal mountains, squeezes between the mountainside and the sea, and scatters across the eroded spurs between their peaks (Plate 6.1). Further inland, small household clusters are situated at the bases of the many limestone outcrops that sprout abruptly from the swampy plain. These inland mountains include Ba The Mountain, which was one of the most important centres of the ancient kingdom of Funan. Now a tourist



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Plate 6.1 Oceanside residences, Kien Luong

site for viewing the excavated archaeological remains of this seafaring civilisation, Ba The has a contemporary Theravada wat and a Khmer settlement that extends around the alluvial apron between the steep rock face and the swampy plain that encircles it. Khmer people rarely live on the mountain slopes, which are steep and rocky, with many sheer cliffs and caves. The coastal mountains were once covered with jungle that extended well into the swampy plain. Well into the latter half of the twentieth century, this region was a haven for wild animals. Elderly residents recall in the 1940s encountering tigers right outside the door to their houses and hearing them roaring to each other at night on the forested peaks. At that time, elephants still roamed the forests in Ha Tien. Until the 1980s, bush pigs, deer and goats roamed the slopes, which also abounded with poisonous snakes, birds and large troupes of monkeys. Most of these animals have since disappeared, although monkeys still live on at least two coastal mountains. One tale related by Pali teachers in Wat Soc Soai, this region’s main educational monastery, speculates on the origins of the earth

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as a domain created especially by the Buddha as a sanctuary to sequester dangerous wild animals. It started in a wager between the Buddha and Preah An, or Indra, the King of the heavenly realm: Preah An asserted to Buddha that the heavens were finite. Buddha replied that they were infinite. Preah An proposed to find out who was right. If he was correct, Buddha must worship him. If Buddha was right, Preah An would worship Buddha. Preah An set off on a journey with three begging bowls filled with tiny sesame seeds. He would eat just one seed a day, and if the bowls ran empty before he had reached the end of the heavens, he would accept that Buddha was right. Eventually, Preah An indeed ran out of seeds, having passed through many levels without reaching the end. Angry, and wanting to pay Buddha back, he collected all sorts of wild and dangerous animals that he had encountered on the way and brought them back to release into Buddha’s realm. Unperturbed, Buddha created a piece of land floating on the sea on which the wild animals could live. Over time, the land increased in size and became the earth as we know it.

The abbot of Wat Champa Phnom Chrokk, in Hon Soc told me that in the past, Khmer religious virtuosi would meditate, samathi, in the forest that covered the mountains. The previous abbot did this himself in Cambodia for ten years. An evil person who tried to meditate in this way would be killed instantly by wild animals. Only the good could meditate in the mountains and be unharmed. The virtuous were allegedly fed by invisible beings, who would provide alms to them. In certain cases, such people could reach nirvana while in meditation. One tale associated with Ba The Mountain speaks of a monk who disappeared on the mountain while on the alms round. The original Khmer name for the mountain is Phnom Bat Preah Ther: Mountain of the Lost Venerable. The limestone caves in the mountains that line the coast also are the subject of myths told by Khmer locals that attest to their spiritual significance. They speak of ghost tigers and a female eremite who turned to stone after having attained enlightenment. Vietnamese monks also are renowned for being able to reside in the isolated mountain caves and jungles of this region, not fearing animals or ghosts. Chua Hang (Cave temple), a popular pilgrimage destination beside the coast at Hon Chong reportedly was founded by such



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a figure. Elderly Khmers say that in the 1920s or 1930s, a Viet Mahayana monk was invited to their area by their predecessors, from whom he obtained alms, and together they built up the pagoda in a cave on the mountain. Thach Dong, the cave in Ha Tien where the events of the Thach Sanh–Ly Thong story transpired is another destination on the multi-ethnic pilgrimage trail and is considered a site of spiritual power. The other significant natural landform in these parts to sustain Khmer settlement is the beach ridge that runs between the coastal peaks. Sediment deposited into the sea around the mountains has been sculpted by currents and tidal action into the northern shoreline of the gulf. Waves have pushed up a narrow beach ridge that seldom is more than a metre above high water mark and decreases in height as one moves inland. Residence clusters right beside the sea where the sand is highest. Household compounds are arrayed in a narrow band along the beachfront. Wooden framed houses with roofs of thatched sugar palm leaves predominate, supplemented by more recent constructions of cement and brick. Theravada wats, household gardens, domesticated animals and beached fishing craft also share this narrow strip of sand.2  These beachside settlements are protected from high waves and storm surges by the islands and shallow waters of the bay.

High-lying Water in a Coastal Desert Residence atop the landforms of the coastal fringe solves the problem of freshwater scarcity, one of the main constraints on settlement along the gulf coast. The region receives very high rainfall and the rainy season lasts longer than in the mountainous regions of the interior or the eastern coast of the delta. However, for four to five months a year, in the dry season, drinkable water is extremely scarce. Water in the swamps of the coastal hinterland is seasonally brackish and acidic; to this day it is fit for drinking and agricultural uses only during the rainy season. The groundwater is not suitable for drinking. The soil of the swampy depression is so acidic that, when disturbed, the acids released into the water can kill fish. Right by the coast, the groundwater is salty as well as acidic. The small coastal rivers that drain the swamps are salty year round. Pressed between abundant bodies of water—acidic to the north, salty to the

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south and sour below—this rain-drenched coastal strip ironically experiences the most acute dry-season water shortages of all the Khmerpopulated regions in the Mekong Delta. Here again, high land holds the water that makes life possible. The coastal dunes, albeit low, are reservoirs of fresh water. They trap rainwater that sits in a lens above a layer of denser and hence heavier salty water. The groundwater is freshest right on the shoreline, for the sand is high enough at that point to retain rainwater above sea level. The existence of a body of subterranean fresh water along the sea’s edge is signalled by the fruit trees, sugar palms and even tall hardwoods that grow in profusion right beside the ocean. These trees will not grow further away from the sea, except where the land is hilly. This is the staple water source of beachside residents and monastic communities. The water is accessed through shallow wells sunk into the dunes, deep enough to penetrate the lens of fresh water but not so deep as to disturb the underlying seawater layer. Each of these wells is shared by several households, whose members usually are relatives. Ponds, or sras, in the grounds of seaside temples have been dug to serve the needs of monks and local laypersons. Like the neighbourhood wells, they harvest the layer of fresh water stored within the dune. One sras in the seaside hamlet of Chau Kieu (Ba Trai), recently has been lined with cement, however, its base has been left unsealed so that water can percolate through the sandy bottom to recharge the pond. In the dry season, the wells and ponds of the coastal dunes frequently run dry or sour.3  During this time, residents of the coastal fringe turn to the mountains for their freshwater needs. Rainwater that falls upon the limestone hills is captured and retained in the

Figure 6.1   Land use along the beach ridge, Gulf of Thailand



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Plate 6.2 Neighbourhood pond fed by underground spring, Phum Bai Ot

soil of their alluvial aprons. Underground springs that run fresh year round are tapped by mountainside residents, who have dug shallow wells at the base of the mountain next to their houses. The wells remain charged with water from underground springs long after above-ground streams run dry. Neighbours collaborated to dig larger spring-fed wells that are lined with stone from the mountainside (Plate 6.2). These communal wells are spaced at regular intervals through the settlements that ring the mountains.4  Water emerging from the mountainside is trapped in some places behind boulders to form natural holding ponds, or is collected in artificially constructed above-ground reservoirs at the foot of the mountain. Water drawn from mountain springs is consumed to this day by residents of the mountainside settlements. Until recently, it also was used by nearly all residents of the coastal dunes as the only available source of dry-season fresh water. In the dry season, when

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their seaside wells ran salty, people from the dune settlements would walk to the nearest mountain to procure household water supplies from a communal well or mountainside pond. They would delegate a person, often a child, armed with a shoulder pole and pair of water containers, to undertake the time-consuming daily watercollecting chore. As the sole natural source of year-round drinkable water, the mountains were water sources of last resort for all residents of the coastal fringe. The water from these sources is considered pure and in several places it continues to be drunk fresh, without the need for boiling. However, some mountainside springs were dangerous for outsiders. For instance, only locals could drink from the spring beside Wat Kiri Vongsa Charya Pruk in Hon Soc, according to its abbot: For a long time in the past, any people from outside the village who drank water from the spring would come down with a fever: we call it jungle fever. But locals could drink it and were not affected. There must have been a poisonous tree lying across the path of the spring on the mountain. It must have been very toxic, because all it took was for the water to run past it for it to become poisoned. Locals were immune because they had been drinking the water all their lives—the water was in their blood and that of the parents and grandparents. But recently, the water has become drinkable again. Outsiders no longer come down with the fever. The tree must have died—perhaps it was destroyed by the blasting to extract rock from the mountain. In any case, the water is safe again.

Alternative sources of dry-season water existed but access to them was restricted. One was to use a set of large clay jars, peng, to capture and store rainwater for household use. However, the majority of Khmer households lacked the resources to purchase these jars in sufficient quantities to tide them through the dry season. There also was a lively commercial water trade. Water sellers would push carts and bicycles loaded with fresh water through the rural settlements, selling water from door-to-door. This water was obtained from mountainside reservoirs, private rainwater reservoirs, township water supplies, and even shipped from the islands off the coast.5  Again, obtaining water this way was a costly option. In the mid-1990s, state authorities laid a system of underground pipes to supply water pumped from mountain-top reservoirs to residents of the coastal



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settlements for a fee.6  Since that time, well use has diminished on the dune settlements, although mountainside dwellers mostly still rely on well water since it is free. The high cost of state-supplied water means that beachside residents make every effort to capture and conserve rainwater and some continue to procure water from the mountainside. Communal institutions also depend upon mountainside water. As noted, temples that are located along the shoreline have wells and sras. Most temples have large rainwater reservoirs of stone, brick or cement, financed and built by laypersons for the use of the resident monks and visitors. In periods of extreme water shortage, laypeople come to the temples to obtain water from their rainwater tanks and wells. During festivals, or when demand is high, laypeople purchase water for the temples, or cart it from the nearest mountainside well. Many temples draw water directly from mountainside springs. Temples situated at the base of mountains draw water from a well or pond in their grounds that is fed by a spring. Temples which are further away from the mountains obtain water that is channelled along a system of pipes from the nearest mountainside source into reservoirs within the temple grounds. Over 700 metres long in some cases, the pipes once were made of lengths of split bamboo but have been replaced since by rubber or metal. Resident monks and laypeople living close to these temples helped to build these elaborate communal water-piping systems and neighbours regularly come to draw water from them owing to the scarcity and expense of alternative water sources.

Livelihood Transformations Until at least the 1980s, residents regularly climbed the mountains to hunt for bush pigs, deer, goats and snakes in the forest. They cut timber for building and firewood, collected bamboo and vines for furniture construction, and gathered fruits and tubers. Medicinal plants that grow wild are still harvested from the mountainside. According to one local abbot, this medicine traditionally was collected and dispensed by Khmer monks and knowledgeable people in the village: Traditional healers in the past were very skilful. They could tell whether a plant was poisonous or had curing properties just by

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looking at it. They used every part of the plant for medicine. Viet people, mostly from An Giang, also come to the coastal mountains to collect plants for traditional medicine for charity. They have been doing this for years and it is still going on. They just come and collect what they need; they do not use a local guide.

Over many generations, the rocky slopes of several coastal mountains have been laboriously terraced and given over to pepper production. Cultivation of this crop historically is associated almost exclusively with the ethnic Chinese, the Hainanese in particular (Engelbert 2007; Mogenet 2003: 68, 100). However, today many Khmer residents of the mountainside villages maintain their own small pepper stands or else tend the vines owned by others. They also grow mangoes, cashews, jackfruit, bananas, tamarinds and papaya on the mountain slopes and around their houses on the alluvial aprons and dunes. Sugar palms are cultivated for consumption at home and sale in the market and some families boil the syrup in vats to make palm sugar. Cattle graze on pasture, fallow rice fields and roadside verges at the bases of the mountains. Much of the alluvial apron is used for grazing livestock and enclosures for water buffalo, cows, pigs, chickens and ducks are interspersed between the houses. Seasonal rainfed rice was grown on the alluvial slopes and back from the coastal fringe, but only a generation ago rice was not extensively cultivated on the plain, owing to the limited area of arable land and the toxicity of the surface water. The flooded forest of the plain was a site for hunting and gathering, charcoal making, and honey and wax collection. Fish, crabs and snakes abounded in the swamps and tigers once roamed the marshy plain. Waterbirds massed in great numbers; several species of endangered water birds are still found in the interior.7  The swamps are filled with grasses and reeds that were used to make mats, twine, baskets and clothes. Paperbark trees continue to be used for house construction and firewood. Elderly residents recall that in their youth, bees were extremely numerous. Beehives could be seen everywhere. People collected wax from the hives for use in lamps and candles. A great deal of honey was produced. In the previous generation, people sold honey maybe once a year, gathering it and ferrying it by boat to Rach Gia in a journey that took a couple of days. However, one could earn very little money from such a venture.



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The primarily local and natural resource base relied upon by Khmers until the agrarian modernisation programmes of the 1980s enabled a way of life that many locals describe as having been healthful and wholesome. Comments by one abbot serve as a repudiation of official Vietnamese development discourse, which celebrates the improvements to rural livelihoods that are supposed to have been brought about by green revolution technology and access to commodity markets: In the past we ate what was available locally and rarely sold it on the market. The diet of wild animal meat, plants and fruits of that time may seem deficient by today’s standards but it was probably more nutritious than the food eaten today. It kept people healthier and less susceptible to disease. In the previous generation, people aged 70 could keep working like a young person today. Most noticeable was the clarity and longevity of eyesight enjoyed by the previous generation. The former abbot of this temple was able to read at length without glasses even when he was in his eighties. Each successive generation has lost its health, vitality and strength compared with the previous generations.

Before 1975, just one crop of rice per year was grown throughout the coastal zone, owing to the lack of fresh water for irrigation. The variety grown was called srau thngun (heavy rice). It was rainfed. The growing season lasted six months. The stalks were a metre or more tall. Kien Luong is one of the few places where it is still found. Canals constructed in the 1970s and 1980s helped to drain the swamps, channel in fresh water and allowed the cultivation of up to two crops of rice per year in the flatlands. However, effectively often one crop is harvested. The spring crop, harvested in February, is usually a good one, although sometimes it is affected by excess sun. No rice is grown during the next three months because of the build up of acid water in the canals. Once the rains begin, the rain and water from the Mekong flushes out the acid. The second crop of the year, planted in June, is rainfed but it very often is wiped out by storms. The wind is so strong it blows over the stalks, and water wets the grains and causes them to rot. Despite new rice varieties and technology and the state’s heavy investment in irrigation infrastructure, Khmers of the coastal fringe

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Plate 6.3 Seasonal fish pond–flooded rice field, Bai Cha Va

are lucky to get just one good crop a year, nudging them just slightly ahead of the time when only one crop was grown. Reprising a common sentiment among Khmer people of his generation, one 45 year old praised the rice grown in his youth: The output was not comparable to today’s rice varieties but it was so much more delicious than what is grown today. All you needed to do is add some soy sauce to salt it and you had a really satisfying meal, with no need for any side dishes. And it gave you a lot of energy, keeping you going for longer between meals than contemporary rice varieties.

Farmers in several locations gain additional benefit from their rice fields during the dry season by allowing salt water to flood into the fields and then by raising brackish water shrimp. This is practised by most farmers in the vicinity of Phnom Preah Umpul (Tamarind River Mountain) by the coast in Hon Dat. From March to June the sea wall built by local authorities in the 1980s is raised and salt water is let into the fields so that farmers can raise shrimp. When



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Plate 6.4 Fishing boats off Chau Kieu, Kien Luong

the rains come in mid-year, the salt is flushed out of the fields and rice is grown again. The shrimp yield is fairly small but farmers use little capital aside from buying the baby shrimp. Those who maintain a balance between shrimp and rice have been able to sustain an income or, at the very least, a food source, during the dry season. Right beside the temple in Bai Cha Va, separated by a low narrow levee, is a shallow pond filled with salty water. The owner said the pond alternated between being used for shrimp in the dry season and rice in the rainy season. He said the shrimp often fails but it is still widely practised in the region. Nothing else will grow in the dry season. The sea is vital to local livelihoods. Many Khmer beachside residents have small motorised fishing boats pulled up on the narrow beach or moored in front of their house. The boats are used for local coastal fishing; multi-day fishing expeditions far from shore are rare. Until just a decade ago the coastal waters teemed with fish. Elderly residents of Srok Chau Kieu recalled that in the 1950s, Khmer people did not own boats. Two or three men would walk through

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the water trawling a net between them. The sea here is so shallow you can walk a good way out from the shore. People could catch more than enough fish that way. Fish and kalang ka, armour plated horseshoe crabs, were numerous and the sea crabs were huge. A fisherman would often share his catch with others. People from the interior settlements some five to seven kilometres away would come down to the coast to fish and catch crabs. The muddy mangrove flats were exploited for crabs and other shellfish (Plate 6.4). Women in nearly every household in the Khmer fishing village of Srok Chau Kieu sit together on their front porches boning and gutting anchovies for a local fish processing factory at piecework rates. Some work in the factory packing fish in ice styrofoam containers for export. In Bai Cha Va, many Khmer people find work in the long-clawed sea crab processing facility tying sea crabs brought in by coastal trawlers and packing them in ice. Other activities of people living along the beachside road include mending fishing nets, scaling fish and catching baby sea crabs for rearing in tanks. Many combine this with running smallgoods stalls, selling fried snacks, tending livestock and working in their gardens. One family by the beach in Bai Ot exemplifies the mixed economy of this region. They grow rice back from the beach, own pepper vines on the hill half a kilometre from their house, fish from the beach, and shell crab claws at home for sale to an export firm.

Coastal Connections The landforms of the coast provide the basis for transport within the region. Tracks ring the base of each mountain, following the line of settlement. Several of these have been graded to create roads; some have been sealed to make concrete paths. Sandy tracks run between houses along the crest of the coastal dune. These paths joined to make it possible to travel the length of the coast along a narrow strip running between the mountains and the swamp on the one side and the sea on the other. Until very recently, people walked between settlements. In the 1950s, Khmer residents of the coastal districts of Hon Dat and Kien Luong would undertake day-long walks along the coast to the market centres located beside the mouths of rivers. In the early 1990s, many still walked each day to the nearest mountainside to fetch water, journeys that took them more than two hours. Water sellers would push carts laden with water from village



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to village along the entire coastal strip. Today drinking water is ferried along these same routes by bicycle or motorbike. These journeys followed a route along the shoreline that in Hon Dat, is called the Elephant Road (Plau Daumrei). Elderly residents recall that as late as the 1890s, a herd of some 100 wild elephants took this route, travelling, they speculated, between Cambodia and the Ca Mau Peninsula. At a certain time of year the elephants would appear and sometime later they would return the way they came.8  Today, this path has been sealed and incorporated into the modern transport network. Sections of the coastal highway to Cambodia follow the forest path once trampled by elephants and long used by Khmer locals for residence and travel. In Rach Gia City, the original airport and bus station were built atop the wide strip of elevated sand occupied by the Khmer settlement of Phum Chom Ca (Lang Cat). People also would take the sea route along the coast, travelling by wooden sailboat, but they had to wait until the winds were blowing in the right direction before they could travel where they wanted. In the 1950s, residents of Phum Bai Ot would make the 12-kilometre journey to Peam, or Ha Tien, by sailboat. “If the wind was good we could sail there very quickly,” an elderly resident recalled, “but it took a lot of effort to get back. Sometimes, if the wind was not right, we had to walk back home.” The former abbot of Wat Champa Phnom Chrokk, Hon Soc, travelled to Cambodia by sailing boat along the coast. People also made fishing journeys in the coastal waters and out to the islands of the gulf. Coastal rivers provided safe havens for these vessels during the storm season. In other months they were moored on the beach in front of people’s houses, a practice still followed today. Khmer localities on the eastern shores of the Gulf of Thailand share many characteristics with those across the border in Kep, Kampot and Kompong Som. The bulk of the population of Cambodia’s coastal fringe is concentrated in a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea and around the estuaries of local rivers. The mountains that line Cambodia’s gulf coast are used by their Khmer inhabitants in a similar manner to those on the Vietnamese side of the border. Residents of the fishing and resort town of Kep, for example, draw their water from wells sunk into the coastal dune and from mountain springs. Those in rural areas of Kampot Province obtain it from wells at the bases of limestone

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mountains and the temple sras, or else purchase it from travelling water sellers. Like their counterparts across the border, Khmers on Cambodia’s gulf coast engage in pepper cultivation, cattle rearing, and the gathering of forest resources. They make use of the sea for fishing, crabbing and tourism, and exploit the coastal plain for salt pans, shrimp ponds and sand dredging. Khmer Krom people have long maintained their connections with these Cambodian coastal settlements. During the colonial period it was commonplace for coastal people living on either side of the border to cross it to trade and find work. In the mid-1960s, when Cambodia was still at peace, a large number of Khmers moved to the Cambodian section of the coastal strip to escape fighting in the Vietnamese administered area. When the Khmer Rouge came to power the flow reversed, but many did not escape Cambodia with their lives. Today border crossing is commonplace again and Khmer traders, monks and people undertaking family visits regularly pass through the Ha Tien border gate on their journeys across the border. Khmers from Peam (Ha Tien) regularly visit the Kampot market to sell fruit. Kampot Province is home to many Khmers from Kramoun Sor, who work as officials, teachers, soldiers, fishers, traders and farmers, or who have married locally. According to locals this situation exists because these localities are so close and Cambodia offers many advantages to Khmer speakers from Vietnam. According to legends, the coastal settlements on each side of the border are linked in more mysterious ways. Phnom Chgnaut, a limestone mountain between Kep and Kampot, has a cave containing a seventh-century pre-Angkorian temple, which is a minor tourist attraction. The ticket collector, a Khmer Krom man, told me that the cave is the mouth of a tunnel that runs underground to Thach Dong Mountain in Peam, some 40 kilometres to the east. Snakes used to travel along it so it is called the snake road ( plau pua). The snakes were large. They would emerge to eat monkeys on the mountainside. In fact he believes the snakes were nagas, from the undersea naga realm ( pochum niet). The tunnel has filled in now, he reported. During the war, people from Vietnam tried to use it to smuggle in weapons and the tunnel collapsed, burying them alive. A similar tale links the mountains and islands of the coastal strip to the mountains of An Giang, which lie 40 kilometres to the north. It is said that a tunnel connects the two mountain chains, running under the vast swampy plain between them. On the top of



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Phnom Kto (Nui To), in An Giang, is a freshwater lake. If one drops a coconut into the lake, sometime later it will bob to the surface in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Peam, having traversed the length of tunnel. It is said that this tunnel was used by the Khmer king to travel secretly between the mountains and the sea when fighting the enemy. He would disappear underground at one place, then re-emerge at another to surprise the enemy. It is impossible to construct a bridge across the route taken by the subterranean tunnel. Reportedly, at each attempt to span it, the bridge foundations have sunk into the earth. This Khmer-populated coastal strip is also integrated by water with areas much further away. Local tales about the coastal mountains, such as the following related by an abbot in Hon Dat, depict them as destinations for seagoing voyagers: The wat is called Wat Champa Phnom Chrokk, which translates as Frangipani Mountain Passage Temple. It was given this name because in the past the land here was covered by the ocean, which encircled the mountain, making it an island like Phu Quoc. Elderly people in this village have told me stories passed down by their elders that in the past, when the ocean reached this point, ocean-going sailing ships, including those from China, would dock here, making the site a busy centre for trade and visits from people from faraway places. Once, a beam from one of these vessels was dug up in this village. It was rotting and in pieces, but gave substance to the stories relayed by the elders.

As in other Khmer-settled regions of the Mekong Delta coastline, migrants from the southern coast of China have come here to work and settle in significant numbers. They were key to the development of pepper cultivation along the Gulf of Thailand, groves of which cover the coastal mountains in both Vietnam and Cambodia. One meets their descendants all along the coast, but they usually speak Khmer better than the dialect of their Chinese ancestors and frequently identify as Khmers. Indeed, almost all coastal residents who today identify as Khmers, be they abbots, farmers, fishermen or small traders, acknowledge that they are in fact of part Chinese ancestry. This mixed Chinese ancestry is a matter of some pride. Khmer community leaders assert that nearly all locals have some basic knowledge of three languages (Khmer, Vietnamese and a Chinese dialect) and describe the Khmer people of the Gulf of Thailand’s

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northern coastline as Khmer-Chinese mestizos. They embody a way of being Khmer that is strengthened, not diminished by interactions with those of different origins. Fresh watercourses are associated with a different ethnic network that until recently scarcely impacted on the Khmers of the coastal fringe. Ethnic Vietnamese, many from Tonkin, began to populate the rural hinterland in the French colonial era. Migration increased significantly during the Republican and post-war eras in tandem with canal construction projects that aimed to secure the area and unleash its potential (Biggs 2010; Hansen 2009). According to one elderly Khmer: In the past, the land back from the coast was all forest. No rice was grown. The water was red and sour. Only when canals were dug did people begin to settle there. The canals brought in fresh water from the Mekong, allowing people to grow one season of rice. It was settled by Viet people. They are boat people. They travelled by wooden boat down the canals newly dug by the French and Vietnamese governments and settled wherever it looked good to live.

Elderly residents recall when the coastal fringe was predominantly Khmer. One man who was born in 1940 in the beachside settlement of Chau Kieu (Hon Chong) had studied Sanskrit, Pali, French and English in Phnom Penh from 1959–63: “In my youth there were just one to two Viet people per hundred Khmer in this stretch of the coast. The whole coastal region, from here through to upper U Minh was nearly all Khmer.” Some of the first Vietnamese that locals met worked for the French limestone mining and cement industry. More arrived during the French and American wars to set up resistance bases in the thickly forested and cave-pocked coastal mountains and assist seaborne arms trafficking from Cambodia. Under the US-backed South Vietnamese regime, market towns along the coastal rivers, roads and canals filled with government administrators and troops. During the wars, the slopes of the oceanside mountains were heavily bombed and shelled. Several Khmer temples were destroyed and many Khmer residents were forced to evacuate their coastal settlements. The abbot of the 300-year-old Khmer temple in the mountainside village of Hon Soc, a genial and intelligent man, told me that in 1966, people from this area had fled to Hon Dat for



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safety and built a new temple on the outskirts of that town. After the war, most of them returned to find that the buildings and most of the stupas of their mountainside temple had been destroyed: When I ordained here in 1976, all that remained of the wat was a small preah vihear [worship hall] made entirely out of bamboo stems. There was no roof. The floor was of earth, and there was no furniture. Over time, laypersons made furniture for the monks out of bamboo. It was extremely tough then. We monks had to eat bush tubers, harvested from the mountain. There was no rice. The bush tubers were poisonous: they had to be soaked in water for a day to leach out the poison then dried in the sun for days. Then they were cut up and used as a staple for meals.

In 1985, laypersons began bringing tea tree wood to the temple to rebuild it. It was again rebuilt out of tea tree wood in 1996, and in 2000 the preah vihear was reconstructed using brick and cement. In 2009 another building was being built by the ten resident monks and laypersons. It took a large team working from dawn to dusk two weeks to dig a single three metre deep foundation hole in the stony ground. “We want to leave something for future generations to remember us by”, the abbot said with a shy laugh. In the late 1970s, Khmer communities close to the border with Cambodia were affected by cross-border incursions launched by the Khmer Rouge. The abbot of the temple at Mui Nai beach, Ha Tien, said the Khmer Rouge period was a terrible time, the Khmer Rouge were invading and killing locals until the Vietnamese army drove them away. He invoked the name of the Khmer Rouge with a shudder. In 1978, the Vietnamese army relocated all the Khmers in Ha Tien District away from the border to sites in eastern Kien Giang Province. An elderly Khmer cadre responsible for overseeing the relocation told me that local Khmers were able to return home after a year. Unlike the situation in An Giang Province, their return was smooth and there have been few property disputes. One former Khmer village beside the border in Ha Tien is again all Khmer. But another temple was moved permanently away from the border to a new location. In the post-war years Vietnamese from other parts of the country, a high proportion from northern Vietnam, continued to move into the region to take up work and business opportunities in the fishing, aquaculture, tourism and mining sectors and work

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in government service. Ethnic minority boarding schools were set up to teach the state school curriculum to local Khmer children. As a result of interactions with these migrants and state promoted Vietnamese schooling, Vietnamese is spoken widely by Khmers in this area. Monks note that Vietnamese language proficiency among Khmers is superior to that of Khmers in other provinces. However, few Khmers study past year twelve in the state school system, because they cannot pass the university entrance examinations. Temple festivals attract a large proportion of non-Khmer attendees, including pilgrims, who also contribute to temple reconstruction. However, nowhere in this region is the alms round conducted and ordinations are decreasing, particularly as youths leave the area to seek work outside. In Wat Beng Khlot, Bai Cha Va, one monk told me that the number of ordinations has decreased sharply in the last decade: In 2003, when I first ordained, this wat had 30–40 monks. Everywhere you looked there were monks. They studied here as well. But now there are only three. People no longer consider ordaining to be practical. And they study in school instead of the temple. But it is very useful to ordain. The lessons learned are of great value.

Elderly Khmers in this region comment that Khmer literacy is weak and literacy classes offered in temples for children are poorly attended. And with so few publications available in Khmer, there is little chance for locals to practise reading their language. A small number of temples offer low level classes for young monks in Buddhism, Pali and Khmer literacy, however, the monastic education system is weakly developed compared with the eastern delta. Wat Soc Soai serves as the main teaching temple for Kien Giang Province and had 140 students in 2008, but each year only a handful of students do well enough to make it into the middle school level of the monastic studies programme offered in Soc Trang and Tra Vinh Provinces. Nevertheless, in contrast with the eastern delta, Khmers of the coast enjoy easy access to Cambodia. The abbot of one temple in Hon Dat told me he goes to Cambodia at least once a year “for tourism”. It has become easier to travel to Cambodia in recent years, but one still cannot go there to study. He loves hearing the language spoken all over the place. And there are books and newspapers and



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Khmer programmes on the TV. This, he said, is because the Cambodian state protects Khmer culture and develops it. Close proximity to the border has given Khmers in this region access to some of this cultural production. In the rooms of Khmer monks one can find calendars, dictionaries and almanacs for telling fortunes, printed in Khmer and published in Cambodia, sold by travelling salesmen. One also sees many Khmer music DVDs and films. Cambodian-produced music is widely played in temples, households and on personal devices. Temples in this region also get Cambodian television channels via a satellite dish. By virtue of these exchanges Khmers in this region maintain contact with their language primarily by watching and listening to it being spoken and sung, rather than through book learning and study.

Economic Take-off, Khmer Decline Since the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s, the coastal region has turned into a very dynamic centre for cross-border trade, tourism, pilgrimages, fishing, aquaculture, mining and real estate speculation. In 2000, I gained a sense of the development fever gripping residents of this coastal area. The Khmer abbot of a temple positioned above the tourist beach of Mui Nai in Ha Tien surprised me by quizzing me avidly about my salary, daily costs, the price of my hotel room, meals, motorcycle rental, and whether I had slept with prostitutes. He propositioned me to invest in a hotel or some other business in the local area: a theme to which he kept returning during our long conversation. He was well informed about the opportunities, prices, procedures and pitfalls and suggested I conduct my investment with his assistance for he knew the lay of the land, and could introduce me to prospective sellers and local partners. He himself could front the business and run the gauntlet of red tape with local officialdom. He knew for a fact, he said, that this whole beach area was about to take off. People from the city and overseas had already bought up many of the best locations but thanks to him I could find some very good sites. Investment on my part would be a matter of a mere one or two hundred thousand dollars for a medium-sized hotel. The fact that I told him my occupation was as a researcher did not deter him for an instant from hammering me with his business proposals.

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Few Khmers have benefitted from this explosive development. Many sold their land to buyers who flocked to the area eager to convert rice land to aquaculture, or set up a service business. Khmers frequently were keen to sell their land to repay debts incurred as a result of farming failures, or their purchases of expensive services and consumer goods. In some estimates, over half of the Khmer households in this region are now landless. Vietnamese are the predominant owners of businesses in the deep water fishing, coastal aquaculture, mining, trading and tourism industries and they dominate in local government and state enterprises. Today, most of the large shops, petrol stations and processing facilities are said to be Vietnamese owned. Khmers work as wage labourers in many of these sectors, tending shrimp farms, threshing rice, working as deckhands on coastal trawlers, doing processing work or serving as hotel cooks and cleaners. Wages in most of these jobs amount to only a few dollars a day, much of the work is seasonal, and unemployment is extremely high. Owing to the lack of local employment opportunities many Khmer youths have left the region to work in factories in the vicinity of Prey Nokor, or Ho Chi Minh City. Migrants from northern Vietnam who worked in the hotel sector in Rach Gia told me that Khmers were hard working but were found only in low-paid manual jobs because they lacked the intellectual capacity for owning or running businesses and couldn’t save. They were unlike Vietnamese who were intellectuals, tri thuc, and used their heads to make a living. However, it seems more likely that success in business in this region relies on social and cultural ties from which Khmers have been excluded. A great number of locals who own boats, shrimp-raising ponds, shops and processing facilities received assistance in starting their businesses from relatives who had fled overseas after the war. Those with enterprises in the lucrative tourist and pilgrimage industries succeed by virtue of speaking Vietnamese and knowing the tastes of their almost exclusively Vietnamese customers. Local Khmer people are employed as workers in the gravel and cement making industries, but the majority of workers and managers in these industries are of northern Vietnamese provenance and have populated these positions through a process of chain migration. The coastal region is subject to a number of extractive ventures of a kind that quite literally undermine the existence of its original



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residents. The bombing and presence of armed troops in the oceanside mountains during the war years led to a rapid decline in the wild animal population. Few large trees are left on the slopes. Most have been cut down for housing construction and for pepper cultivation. The mountains continue to be a magnet for people seeking medicinal plants growing on their slopes. Herbal doctors and medicine traders based in An Giang Province insisted to me that the most potent herbal remedies available were to be found in the mountains along the coast. However, locals offered a different perspective. One monk in Hon Soc told me that as the forest has thinned from overexploitation, the potency of its plants has diminished: Often collectors do not know what they are doing; they mistake plants for others or take the wrong variety of the plant they are looking for. But there is no oversight so they just take whatever they want, including the source plants, the ones from which all others spring. Medicinal plants still grow on the mountain but they are not as potent as the plants that once grew there. The original plants, it was said, could cure cancer and other serious diseases but today’s plants just ameliorate the symptoms, making one feel slightly better but not curing the disease.

Another blow to the security of local livelihoods has been excessive exploitation of the gulf by large and small commercial trawlers, which by 2000 had almost denuded the coastal waters of fish and shellfish. A resident of Chau Kieu told me that hand-held trawl nets are no longer used to catch fish in the coastal shallows. The area is fished out because there are so many boats. Boat owners report a similar decline in the catch. Many of the boats moored along the beach are rarely taken out. An elderly Khmer-Teochiu women selling banana fritters in a coconut leaf-covered stall by the water’s edge in Bai Cha Va told me that her family has a fishing boat moored behind her house, but in that year (2010) they had not taken it out, because there are so few fish in the sea. Her children get work in the crab processing factory, although the sea crabs are extremely small. Just a decade or so ago, sea crabs were twice the size, she told me. Coastal dwellers have needed to diversify their livelihoods owing to steep declines in the catch in recent years. Many Khmer families have been encouraged to move into raising brackish water shrimp, to make up for a loss in fishing income, but also because rice yields

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are poor in this salt-infested region. The coastal plain from Ba Hon westwards has been excavated and filled with seawater to raise tiger shrimp. Wat Campalok, situated about 500 metres from the sea on a sandy ridge in Bai Ot, is surrounded by shrimp ponds. Previously, locals grew rainfed rice with a six months growing season, but around 2003 the entire hamlet switched to shrimp farming on the decision of the local authorities. However, it did not take long for residents to discover that the income from this new industry is unstable and many have not recouped the costs required to excavate their ponds. By 2009, many shrimp ponds had been abandoned because they were not profitable. More seriously, extensive brackish shrimp pond construction on the coastal plain has flooded much of the coastal fringe permanently with seawater. As a result, communal wells and temple ponds in several locations along the coast have become contaminated by salt. Wat Campalok had two rainfed wells sunk into the sandy ridge that were used by monks and local laypeople for drinking, cooking and washing. During the dry season brackish water infiltrated both wells, but they still were used since there was no alternative water source. One well was destroyed when a canal was dug through the temple grounds to bring fresh water into the area for rice growing. A few years later when the area was rezoned and shrimp ponds were dug around the temple, the second well filled with salty water. Now, even in the rainy season, its water is sour. This temple and the community that supports it has lost its only water source and faces a critical drinking water shortage year round (Plate 6.5). Most devastating in the Vietnamese sector of the coast is the mining of the coastal mountains for cement production. This industry existed in nascent form in the colonial period but has accelerated sharply in the post-war years. Major mining excavations are underway on the majority of the region’s limestone mountains. The companies responsible for mining the mountains include the Ha Tien Cement Company, the Swiss-based Holcim corporation, and several local state-owned enterprises.9  These mining operations have turned the coastal region into a moonscape of gouged craters, treeless slopes and flattened peaks. Entire mountains that once were an essential element of the local resource base have simply disappeared, literally blasted away. Khmer mountainside neighbourhoods have been displaced by quarries and access roads. The houses that remain in the vicinity of quarries are covered with limestone dust



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Plate 6.5 Wat Campalok surrounded by salt water

and shake as heavily laden trucks rumble by. Slopes have been blasted of trees. Constant explosions have driven away surviving wild animals. Numerous mountain springs that Khmer residents long have relied upon for survival have been blown up or have run dry. These forms of manic extraction, all of which are driven by extra-local economic agents, consume the very landforms that local people rely upon for needs that are as fundamental as drinking water, a place to live, and basic nutritional survival. Parallels exist with sites along Cambodia’s gulf coast where coastal communities have been adversely affected by shrimp farming, estuarine sand dredging and overfishing. As the mountainous coastline methodically is razed to sea level so that cities elsewhere may spring up and prosper, the prospects for survival of its Khmer population seem bleak indeed.

Conclusion While changes sweep this fast developing and economically booming coastal region, its Khmer residents are able to report little in the way of positive improvements. The majority still struggles to find fresh water in the dry season and most rely on the same communal

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water sources that served their grandparents half a century ago. Rice farming continues to assume a relatively unimportant role in livelihoods that are fashioned from multiple sources and provide Khmers only basic subsistence. Literacy levels and educational attainments in both Vietnamese and Khmer remain modest. Khmers are a relatively weak and powerless group in a region that continues to be dominated by powerful others. Their circumstances contrast with the dramatic change in fortunes experienced by Thach Sanh, a forest hunter who rose to become king of Cambodia. The popular children’s tale attributes Thach Sanh’s ascendancy to his honesty, bravery and physical prowess, characteristics still regarded as typically Khmer by most residents in this region. However, these qualities have not rewarded Khmers in the contemporary context. Most have remained poor or have become landless while a range of outsiders have become wealthy. The best option available to local Khmers is to work for those who monopolise the lucrative sectors in the regional economy, or to leave the region altogether. The incursion of people who have arrived to seek their fortunes in this region in the post-war era is not unprecedented. This mountain-studded coastal fringe has long been a home for a variety of ethnic and religious groups who have come here to conduct business, fish, cultivate pepper, undertake pilgrimages, evade central authority and engage in contests over territory. Khmers have been drawn into the social and economic projects of these multiple cultural others and many of these outsiders have become Khmer. This continuity is suggested by the tale of Thach Sanh, which demonstrates the hero’s skill at interacting with and making alliances with others. What is unprecedented is the intensity of the demands on the natural resources of this region. Overfishing, deforestation and unrestrained mining have eliminated many of the traditional resources that, until a decade or two ago, Khmers could depend upon for their survival. The forests, mountains and plethora of land and sea creatures mythologised in the Thach Sanh tale have been degraded, extracted and exported, largely for the benefit of outsiders rather than for local Khmer people. The questions that a modern version of the Thach Sanh tale might pose, therefore, are not only whether Khmers might win recognition for their rightful place in this region, but whether it might still be possible for Khmers to remain in this place at all.



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7 The Northeast Uplands: Primitive Modernity in the Forest Metropole Kampuchea Krom’s largest sub-region, the northeast uplands, lies beyond the Mekong Delta proper. Arising at the northern limits of the Mekong’s floodplain it stretches northeast through Rhuom Daumrei (Tay Ninh Province) and Prey Nokor (modern day Ho Chi Minh City) to the southern foothills of the Annamite Cordillera.1  From the sea cliffs of O Cap in modern Vung Tau Province, it extends northwest to the Cambodian border. It is the highest region in Kampuchea Krom, with eroded basalt slopes, mountainous outcrops and river valleys that slice through plateaus of old alluvium.2  Much of its undulating landscape remains heavily forested. Sparsely populated until a century or so ago, but now hosting a vast industrialised conurbation, this region is known in Vietnamese as the Southeast Region (Dong Nam Bo). Contemporary residents of Kampuchea Krom refer to the region metonymically by the name of its most celebrated centre, Prey Nokor, the forest capital. This uplands region is considered by Khmers in the Mekong Delta to be the oldest site of Khmer settlement in Kampuchea Krom and is said to remain home to Khmer daem, the original Khmers. These Khmers are believed to be uncontaminated by modern outside influences, while also the least exposed to the civilising influence of Buddhism. The original Khmers share the uplands with a variety of tribal peoples considered by lowlanders to be even more primitive. More recently the uplands have been populated by a huge number 219

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of non-Khmer peoples, who hold similar views about the premodern status of their highland predecessors. Yet many of these newcomers also acknowledge Khmer precedence in the region, which include the beliefs that Khmer people maintain an unbroken connection to the spirits of the land and to the original teachings of the Buddhist faith. These perceptions attach to a region that has experienced the most dramatic transformations in all of Kampuchea Krom. Foreign observers describe it as the first part of the Khmer kingdom to be incorporated into the Vietnamese territorial sphere, and repopulated by migrants from China and Vietnam (Hall 1968: 436–43), leading —some have claimed—to the disappearance of its Khmer population and Khmer cultural character (Aymonier 1900: 130; Barrault 1927: 72, 135). From at least the beginning of French colonialism it became a major centre for urban, commercial and industrial development. Destructive wars and huge refugee movements in the postcolonial period were followed by a renewal of industrialisation, urbanisation and migration, with transformative effects on the region’s natural and social environment. Despite notions of their pristine status, Khmers in this region also have been deeply involved since the French era in the industrialisation and commercialisation of its forested mountainous landscape. They have a long history of robust and transformative interactions with non-Khmer peoples and projects that have reconfigured the face of this region. They continue to be enmeshed in exchanges and networks with people in ecologically similar and contiguous lands across the border in Cambodia and with those in the lowland areas of Kampuchea Krom. Among these developments has been the recent influx of numerous Khmer labour migrants and students from the Mekong Delta. In the face of this dynamism, the continued construction of this region as a site for primordial ways of being Khmer is arresting. Such a perspective may reveal entrenched perceptions of the highlands as a site of great antiquity. But it may also reflect the very intensity of the engagements with modernity in which Khmers in the region have been involved. Today Khmer monastics are engaged in a number of revitalising and civilising projects. These religious and cultural missionaries find their greatest challenge among the region’s supposedly “pre-Buddhist” original inhabitants, and those



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detached by war and migration from longstanding monastic communities. They find themselves engaged, in their struggle to recuperate the Khmer past, with “primordial Buddhists” from the ethnic majority, and agentive Khmer migrants seeking new ways of being modern in the forest metropole.

The Ancient Land The region northeast of the Mekong Delta is not only higher than the delta, geologically it is far older. Its western part, within Tay Ninh, consists of terraces of old alluvium deposited thousands of years before the lower delta was formed, when this was the river’s floodplain (White, Oberthur and Sovuthy 1997: 3–4). The soils are predominantly sandy, interspersed with patches of clay and red earth. The eastern part of this region, from Binh Phuoc towards the coast, comprises the southernmost fringe of the Annamite Range and on average is higher in altitude than the west. The characteristic red soils were formed by the erosion of ancient volcanic rock, which lies just a few metres below the surface. The landscape of the entire region is gently undulating, interrupted by a few isolated mountains. The tallest is Phnom Cheung Pdeng (Nui Ba Den) upon which, it is said, rests a footprint of the Buddha. It rises to 850 metres above the alluvial plain and can be seen from most points within this region. According to an abbot in Tay Ninh, owing to its height, this region was the earliest in Kampuchea Krom to be settled by Khmer people: The whole of Eastern Nam Bo (the eastern provinces of southern Vietnam) once was full of Khmer people. People could live here because the earth was high. Only later did Khmers settle in the lower delta, in what we call Kampuchea Tuk Lik (flooded Cambodia), because for a long time it was nothing but water. This region is called mun, which means “before”. Kampuchea Tuk Lik is called kraoy, which means “after”.

Archaeological vestiges support the idea that this upland region has been settled for a long time. The French archaeologist Malleret reviewed evidence of prehistoric settlement along the region’s rivers, from polished stone axes and ceramic workshops to lithophones and megalithic tombs. He postulated that the waterways of the northeast,

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the Vam Co, Dong Nai and Saigon Rivers, were populated in prehistoric times by people of an Indonesian-type culture, with whom Khmers later co-existed harmoniously and influenced culturally (Malleret 1943: 12–3). The Tay Ninh museum displays a large wooden boat carved out of a single tree trunk that was excavated from a local stream. It is dated at 2,000 years old. Aymonier discussed the discovery near Tay Ninh of an entrenched emplacement surrounded by an earthen wall measuring two kilometres along the sides and three at the front, which he considered to be the vestiges of one of the vast ancient citadels found in different sites in Cambodia. Perhaps it was the actual elephant park [or stockade], Rhuom Daumrei, the name given by Khmers to the province of Tay Ninh (Aymonier 1900: 136–7). Parmentier and Malleret between them discovered five ancient Khmer towers in the province of Tay Ninh. These towers of brick and sandstone are tall and some are still well preserved. Malleret dates one of them to the eleventh century (Malleret 1943: 15). The Tay Ninh provincial museum dates two of the towers to the seventh or eighth century. As for the eastern part of this region, the early nineteenth-century minh huong literatus Trinh Hoai Duc reported that, “in the territory of Baria exist the ruins of an ancient fortress, which was without doubt an ancient royal citadel”. Malleret reported on the discovery of a pre-Angkorian Buddha statue in Vung Tau and in Bien Hoa an image of Lakshmi (Malleret 1943: 19). The site of the famed ancient capital Prey Nokor was most likely located in the central southernmost part of this region on a sandy plateau next to present-day Cho Lon (Aymonier 1900; Malleret 1943). Available evidence suggests it was a grand and wellconnected centre. Trinh Hoai Duc observed there, at Cay Mai, a hill surrounded by water full of lotuses on whose summit once stood a Cambodian temple. In 1816 the temple at the site was renovated and many ancient bricks and tiles were unearthed, along with two gold plates with “images of Buddha mounted on elephants” (Trinh Hoai Duc 1863: 179–80). Malleret reported on the discovery of traces of a long road leading from Duc Hoa, just west of the likely site of Prey Nokor, to Tay Ninh, running parallel to the modern highway and passing the eleventh-century Khmer brick tower of Prei Chek (Malleret 1943: 16). In foreign histories, this region has achieved notoriety as the first part of Cambodia to be annexed by Vietnam (Hall 1968).



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Generally this is depicted as the loss of favourable access to water. French histories depict this part of eastern Cambodia as a fertile region, where Khmers lived along the banks of fresh watercourses. Khmers of this region were ousted by the Vietnamese whose infiltration route was along rivers (Barrault 1927: 135–6). English language histories have focused on the maritime identity of Prey Nokor. The Vietnamese annexation of Prey Nokor had the effect of cutting off Cambodia’s access to the sea and turning Cambodia into a quasilandlocked country (Chandler 2008: 112). Khmers living in the Mekong Delta hold a different view of the northeast uplands to that espoused by archaeologists or secular historians. Influenced by Buddhism, they tend to regard it as a region lacking in civility. Construed as a place where civility variously has been lost, not maintained, or not yet attained, their different versions of regional history offer insights into the paradoxical identity of Prey Nokor, the forest capital. Most resembling the narrative of dispossession advanced by foreign scholars is the history of the northeast related by Khmer residents of the central delta. Vietnamese occupied and drove the Khmers from the fertile and prosperous northeast, forcing them to take refuge in the Mekong Delta. Khmers were no match for the Vietnamese, who had superior power. In some tellings, Khmers elected to move away because of the rowdy conduct of the newcomers. These narratives of dispossession attribute to the northeast an ecology and a history of dispossession identical to the local history and ecology experienced and remembered by Khmers of the central delta. In various respects, these accounts also reprise Buddhist cosmology, with the Vietnamese taking the role of asuras ( yiet), passionate, wicked and aggressive demi-gods, ejected from the slopes of Mount Sumeru to the oceans at its base. Khmers embody the plight of humans at the end of the present Buddhist era, in the wars prior to the coming of Maitreya, during which time the meek have no recourse but to flee from armed and aggressive humans by taking refuge in the forest and other hiding places. A different view of northeast Kampuchea Krom comes from Khmers in the culturally influential provinces of Preah Trapeang (Tra Vinh) and Khleang (Soc Trang). They tend not to accept the notion that Khmers were ever displaced from the northeast; nor do they consider themselves descended from refugees either from there or Cambodia. Rather, it is the Vietnamese who were refugees, fleeing

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wars and misery in their own land to the north. The Khmer king compassionately granted a number of these displaced persons asylum in Prey Nokor, which they then repaid by taking over the kingdom.3  Weakened by sensual excess and in-fighting, the story goes, the Khmer kings were unable to maintain their authority. Over time, Buddhist temples in the northeast went to ruin or were destroyed. In consequence, because temples are the sole means for Khmers to perpetuate their language, customs and identity, the original people of that region no longer know who they are. They no longer respect Buddhism, their morals have deteriorated and they no longer exercise self-restraint. They are Khmers, but they no longer know it or act like it. They call themselves Vietnamese. As one achar explained, such people can be called nguoi viet goc mien, meaning Vietnamese people who come from Cambodian roots.4  An alternative Khmer view of the region, which is topographically nuanced, proposes that there are different strata of people residing in Kampuchea Krom. Khmers of the northeast were the first people of this region for they occupy the highest land, the first to emerge from the sea. As more land emerged from the ocean to form what is now the Mekong Delta, Khmers settled that too. The lowest and swampy parts of this region were populated later by Chinese and Vietnamese refugees and people with no home of their own. They developed markets and cities in the lowlands, which are cosmopolitan, noisy and morally perilous. Meanwhile, living comfortable, self-contained lives in the high country, the people of northeast Kampuchea Krom were relatively insulated from the civilisational influences sweeping the lowlands. They have maintained their original identity unscathed. According to this view, the Khmers who live in the northeast uplands have maintained traditions from the ancient past. Khmers in Tay Ninh practise several customs that one monk visiting from Tra Vinh described as pure Cambodian culture. These include wearing the sampot or sarong and embroidered blouses, residing in stilt houses, water flinging during New Year, and singing and dancing in a style acclaimed by Khmers living elsewhere in as authentically Cambodian. Once, a troupe of dancers and musicians from Srok Sedoh visited Tra Vinh Province. Their visit provoked excitement among residents of the coastal area who clamoured to learn the style. Khmers in Binh Phuoc have low levels of literacy in Khmer compared with their compatriots in the Mekong Delta. However,



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they also reputedly speak Khmer better than they do Vietnamese, adding to the impression that the culture of these highlanders remains “pure”. As a side note, the way this purity is maintained is anything but traditional. Khmer people in both Binh Phuoc and Tay Ninh gain high exposure to developments in Cambodian popular culture thanks to the relatively easy importation across the border of Cambodian films and music DVDs. However, as comments by a Khmer monk from the coastal Mekong Delta locality of Bac Lieu indicate, the association of the uplands with tradition has its obverse side: Up in Loc Ninh they still carry their children in scarves around their backs and live in stilt houses. Khmer literacy is very low. The people study sorcery. They learn how to drive amulets s’nea into the bodies of their enemies. Women in those villages study the dark arts. They can detach their heads, which fly around and they can attack and kill their enemies in that way. These practices are unacceptable in Buddhism. But they are the kinds of old practices that you as an anthropologist would like to study. It is really Old Cambodia. You should visit there to see how Khmers lived in the past.

This is a view of the northeast highlands as a primitive region, yet to be reached by Buddhism. Buddhism is a civilising project distinguishing those who live in the plains from the people of the hills. Khmers of the highlands may be culturally pure but they also are deemed to be uncivilised. In this they are said to resemble other ethnic groups, derogatorily referred to by Khmers as pnong, who live in significant numbers alongside the Khmers in this uplands area.5  Comments by a Khmer man from the Mekong Delta locality of Kompong Spien, who was recruited to work in a French rubber plantation in Binh Phuoc, scarcely distinguish between these two categories of people: Tribal minority people, pnong, lived in that area. They lived in stilt houses. The women didn’t wear tunics until they were married. Only wealthy people would marry. The French never employed them. They were not reliable. They just took any money they earned and drank with it. Also there were some Khmers who were indigenous to that area. They were called Khmer daem, meaning Khmer who were original [autochthonous] to that area. They also lived in stilt

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houses. They built houses on stilts to protect themselves from wild animals that were common in that area. The Khmers here in the Mekong delta used to wear a protective thread with an amulet around their waist to protect them from things like disease, curses, accidents, possession. They were superstitious, didn’t know how diseases were caused or cured. Now few people wear them. Instead, we go to the health clinic. People in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos still wear them—quite probably the majority of people do. Here, they have been replaced by science.

His is a view of the highlands indistinguishable from that promoted by the French or successive Vietnamese governments. Indeed, from such a perspective the lowland Khmers are exemplary moderns, as is evident in their housing, clothing, sobriety, work ethic and scientific understanding. Such views of the Khmer identity of the northeast differ significantly. However, they share a view of the region as uncivilised. Each also reflects a self-consciously lowland Khmer perspective. Missing, however, is the perspective of the region’s contemporary residents. To explore the validity of these views requires a change of altitude and of perspective. In the following we enter the region and meet its Khmer inhabitants.

Life in the Uplands The number of self-identifying Khmer residents with long-term ties to this region is low.6  On conservative estimates, as few as 5,000 such families reside in Tay Ninh and Binh Phuoc, and around 500 and 100 in Dong Nai and Vung Tau respectively. It is difficult to obtain equivalent estimates for Ho Chi Minh City. However, in the 1950s, reportedly, Saigon was home to several Khmer neighbourhoods. Today there are just five functioning Khmer wats in Tay Ninh, three in Binh Phuoc, and two each in Dong Nai, Vung Tau and Ho Chi Minh City.7  This small Khmer population is fragmented into discrete clusters which are widely separated by mountain spurs and the rivers that drain the region. Neither the rivers nor the forested mountain spurs are a focus of contemporary Khmer settlement. Rather Khmers occupy the middle ground on plateaus of old alluvium and slopes of eroded basalt. The character of the habitats occupied by Khmers



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is alluded to in the region’s Khmer place names, as explained by an abbot in Tay Ninh: An old Khmer term for this region was Kampuchea Dei Cot (Drylands Cambodia). There are few rivers here. Binh Phuoc and Binh Duong provinces are called Toul Ta Moak [Viet-ised as Thu Dau Mot]. The name means land with no water. The term used to refer to this region today is Kampuchea Veal Dei Tumneap (Sloping fields Cambodia). In both Binh Phuoc and Tay Ninh, the land is sloping and dry. You cannot grow wet rice—it is a recent innovation. People formerly made a living from harvesting plants and trees that grew on sloping earth. The land was heavily wooded.

The land is significantly drier than elsewhere in Kampuchea Krom. It is too high to be affected by the annual Mekong floods and Khmers live too far from the rivers to make use of them. Their primary source of water for consumption and irrigation is rainfall, although precipitation levels are lower than in southern parts of the delta and the rainy season is shorter. Rainwater is quickly absorbed into the porous soils, and residents dig wells to access it. The wells range in depth from more than 30 metres in the sandy soils of the west 8  to just 2 metres in the rock-underlaid red earth of the east.9  Clusters of households comprised of members of an extended family will often share a single communal well. Wats have their own well and often a rainwater storage tank. Locals report that, until recent times, much of the region was covered in natural forest. A young man in the village of Srok Sedoh, at the foot of Phnom Cheung Pdeng, told me that in the midtwentieth century, the route along the north side of the mountain went through thick jungle. “My grandparents recalled that in their day, no one dared to travel it alone. People had to travel in groups. The jungle was full of dangerous animals. Now the only wild animals left are snakes and monkeys that live on the mountain.” A former abbot in Phum Chloi, to the west, said that in the 1960s, tigers roamed in the forest around his village.10  Until just 15 years ago, people in the village caught and sold monkeys for a living. “They were easy to catch; you could just grab them with your hand. They used to wreck everything: crops and food stores.” Elderly residents of Srok Sedoh told me that during the US war, elephants roamed wild in the thick forest around the village. They would raid

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Plate 7.1 Stilt house, Phum Chloi

the settlement and eat people’s corn. One of my interlocutors once left a pile of harvested corn ears outside his house overnight. The next morning, the ears were gone. I was told that the name Srok Sedoh means Mahout Village. It formerly was a village of elephant handlers. Khmer residents of Tay Ninh still refer to it as Elephant Stockade Province: Khet Rhuom Daumrei. The majority of Khmer houses in Binh Phuoc and up to one third of houses in some Khmer villages in Tay Ninh are built on stilts.11  One of the reasons given for the prevalence of stilt houses in these localities is that the hardwood timber used to build them was readily available locally until the early 1990s. Another reason for building stilt houses was to protect people from the wild animals that abounded in the nearby forests. The houses of family members are grouped around a shared lane or else within a hedged compound. Often the only structure at ground level in a compound is a daubed clay hut for cooking. The spaces under the stilt houses are used to store agricultural equipment and to rest and socialise in the noonday heat.



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However, it is increasingly common for children to build their houses on the ground, often alongside a stilt house in which their parents or grandparents reside. To illustrate this pattern, I describe an extended-family compound in Phum Chloi, Tay Ninh: The stilt house (teh kaphu, literally tall house) stands on 16 poles of kalang wood aligned in a square. Each pole is about 1.8 metres high and rests on a cement pediment. A set of wooden stairs leads to the upper room. The horizontal beams that support the floor of this room are of sugar palm (thnaot) wood. On them rest the floor slats, made of split tel peoung, a variety of bamboo that grows in dense, stubby clusters. The slats are spaced a centimetre apart, providing good ventilation. The floor is springy and yielding. It is an ideal place to sleep. The room is furnished with only a couple of woven sleeping mats. Its walls are clad with long, fine and soft reedy grass stalks, dried, pressed into bundles and secured with a lattice of split tel peoung. The stilt house is a sleeping space for the 70-year-old widower who is the oldest member of this extended family. He has five boys and girls. All of them “captured” their spouses and brought them home to live in this compound. They live in four smaller houses that surround the stilt house. The houses are built on the ground; their walls are of mud daubed onto bamboo lattice. Some of them have their own kitchens. A single freestanding kitchen with daubed earth walls also stands next to the stilt house. Underneath the stilt house are three large wood beds on which the family members sit, socialise and receive guests. At least 22 people live in this compound. Family members move between houses during the day.12  The houses are enclosed within a hedge (rhu bon) of bamboo and assorted bushes and trees, creating a compound about 10 by 20 metres wide. Aside from a few fruit trees, most of the area is bare sandy earth. Behind it is a large paddock of close-cropped grass on which several cattle are grazing. The paddock is enclosed within a low wood and bamboo fence and stands of bushes. The paddock belongs to the family but is separated from the residences by a fence. The family also has some rice fields on the other side of the village about one kilometre away.

Today rubber plantations dominate the undulating landscape of this region. The cultivation of rubber dates to the French era, but the clearing of forest to grow these industrial trees accelerated dramatically in the 1980s. An elderly achar in Wat Serey Odum,

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Plate 7.2 Stilt house, Phum Serey Odum

Loc Ninh, told me: “Previously rubber trees were grown only on the high land in red soil. But now they are grown everywhere, with fertiliser, if necessary. Rubber has entirely replaced the natural forest.” One consequence of the decline in forest cover has been a reduction in the number of stilt houses, which no longer are necessary for protection from animals, and are no longer affordable.13  A diversity of crops is grown around the settlements on the sloping sandy lands of the west. As the land has been cleared, rice has increased in importance as the main livelihood staple. In the past, people grew a kind of rainfed rice called srau bon mang. The stalks were much longer than today’s varieties. The growing season lasted six months. Cassava was another common crop, as well as corn and sugar cane. Rubber and timber plantations were for the most part Vietnamese owned. However, in the fertile red lands of the east, Khmer people have long had their own small stands of rubber trees, cashews, pepper vines and areca trees in addition to an assortment of ground crops. This variety of crops has ensured subsistence security and a stable income. As one resident of Phum Serey Odum observed:



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“In contrast with the Mekong delta, where rice often is the only crop, people here grow many things and there are multiple harvests throughout the year. We go from one crop to the next: from rubber, to cashews, pepper and rice.” He added that landholdings in his vicinity were generally larger than those of Khmers in the lowlands. A person with one hectare in the lower delta is very rich. Here, for a person to have two to three hectares of mixed crops is usual. Others in this village noted that wages for agricultural labour are some 20 per cent higher in Binh Phuoc than in the lowlands of the delta. As might be imagined in this border region, people in the Khmer settlements within Vietnam engage actively in exchanges with those living across the border. Phum Chloi, seven kilometres from the Cambodian border, provides examples of a variety of cross-border movements. Grass collectors come each day by bicycle from Svay Rieng for sugar cane to feed their buffaloes. Cattle from Phum Chloi are sometimes traded into Cambodia, and the pure white clay in the vicinity of the village is mined and sold to make temple statues. Reportedly, only large-scale trade across the border is restricted. Livestock rearing is one of the most lucrative activities and has a long tradition in this region. Some families have as many as 20 head of buffalo or cows. Formerly cows were more common than buffalo. Livestock are raised and sold to itinerant traders. Poorer families tend the animals for a wage. Religious exchanges also traverse the border. The abbot of the village wat studied Khmer and Pali in a wat ten kilometres away, in Svay Rieng, where his uncle is the abbot. He told me that several other local families have relatives on each side of the border. “Travel is easy. Just show your official identity card. Once you know the border guards it is even easier.” Monks from across the border regularly come here to take part in ceremonies. Some lay supporters in Cambodia, and Vietnamese who were formerly resident in Cambodia, have contributed to the temple. Monks from Binh Phuoc similarly reported that it is easy to cross into Cambodia. Also common to Khmer villages in this province are protective amulets on house pillars and carved wooden guardian spirits situated on the edge of settlements. They are practices that lowland Khmers associate with pre-Buddhist highland peoples. However, Khmers in Binh Phuoc describe their nearest non-Buddhist neighbours, the Stieng, as Christians.

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Plate 7.3   Carved guardian spirits enshrined on the outskirts of Phum Serey Odum

Another border-crossing religion is the Cao Dai faith, founded by Cochinchinese civil servants in the late colonial period as an attempt to synthesise Eastern and Western spiritual influences (Hoskins 2012). Its spiritual centre was in Tay Ninh which today remains dominated by this religion. In the 1930s many Khmers were attracted to this faith, alarming French colonialists and many Cambodian Buddhists alike who were concerned about the inroads this “Vietnamese” sect might make among Khmers and its capacity to efface the carefully constructed boundaries between ethnic groups. Available reports suggest that it was principally Khmers of the eastern Cambodian provinces of Prey Veng, Svay Rieng, Kratie and Kompong Cham who, in their tens of thousands, flocked across the border on pilgrimages to the Holy See (Edwards 2007: 197–202). Their movements suggest this border crossing ecumenical faith had particular resonance among Khmer residents of the transborder highlands zone, potentially drawing upon cross-border social linkages that both predate and have outlasted the demarcation of the national border.



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Most contemporary adherents to Caodaism in Tay Ninh identify as ethnic Viets and the language of worship, doctrinal texts and ecclesiastic administration is Vietnamese. Despite these emphases, some contemporary Khmer adherents to this faith utilise it to maintain a separate communal identity and draw an ethnic boundary between themselves and Viet co-religionists. In Tay Ninh I visited one Cao Dai temple whose Khmer-only congregation live grouped in close proximity to the temple and utilise Khmer as the language of worship. Vietnamese lettering has been removed from the temple facade, which is adorned with Khmer naga symbolism, in a way not dissimilar to the use of Theravada temples by Khmers throughout the Mekong Delta to demarcate a distinct non-Vietnamese identity. The flow of people within this region into Cambodia has also been voluminous. Many are Viets involved in clearing forests in part for timber, but mostly to work in large rubber plantations in the basaltic soils of Cambodia’s eastern provinces from Kratie to Svay Rieng. This flow began in the colonial era as the French relocated great numbers of Tonkinese to work in the rubber plantations (Slocomb 2010: 57). It has continued in the post-war years, alarming Khmer ethnonationalists, who portray the settlers as nibbling away at Cambodian territory. Ambivalence is expressed towards these border-crossers also for allegedly passing themselves off as Khmers, which is portrayed as an encroachment onto Khmer identity. Yet Khmers also have been drawn into this region’s industrial forestry sector. One episode took place in the early postcolonial era, when Khmers from the Mekong Delta were recruited to work in the rubber plantations of the northeast. The former hamlet head of Kinh Sang in Cau Ke, a Khmer man, born in 1948, had worked for nine years for a French man on the rubber plantations in A Pulo, just south of An Loc in Binh Phuoc. He said a group of about 50–60 Khmers from his hamlet were brought up to work on the plantations. Another large group of Khmers was brought up from the plains to work in the rubber plantations in Hoang Hoi, also in Binh Phuoc. They had their own Khmer Buddhist temple. He described his experiences: The French brought us up because they already had success working with Khmer people from Soc Trang and wanted more people from the same ethnic group. They liked the Khmers, whom they described as very honest, loyal and hard working.

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There were few people living in that area and they needed labourers. The rubber plantations region was not like the rest of Vietnam. Its atmosphere was entirely French. There were French houses, piped water, roads, French people, and French language spoken everywhere. We ate Thai rice, not Vietnamese rice.

More recently pouring into this region to clear forests and work in rubber and cashew production are a number of “ethnic minority” people such as the Tay and Nung from Vietnam’s mountainous northwest. Khmer residents who live within the Vietnamese administered part of this region fear the encroachment on their livelihoods owing to the pressure to continuously expand rubber plantations and industrial estates. They have found it difficult to maintain tenure over their lands, particularly non-rice lands. Khmer people in Phum Serey Odum complained to me that their ownership of forested land, land on slopes, and land in other communes is not recognised (only local rice land is recognised), and they cannot obtain property certificates for such kinds of land. As a result, if a rubber plantation or a public works project wants one’s land they can just take it and there is nothing one can do to stop them—nor are the owners compensated if such types of land are taken. The pressures they describe focus on forest-based livelihood activities that commonly are associated with the modern industrialised economy. Khmers increasingly are being forced into reliance upon local rice growing— an activity that many consider to be a traditional Khmer livelihood, but which, in this region, is non-traditional.

War-induced Population Transfers As a forested uplands border zone, the northeast highlands experienced intense fighting during the Indochina wars. The grim harvest of these conflicts included the flight of refugees, the destruction of wats and the social marginalisation of the survivors. During the wars, Khmer people in Tay Ninh were forced to abandon their settlements and flee to towns, refugee camps or, before 1975, across the border to Cambodia. Khmers living west of the Vam Co River, some ten kilometres from the contemporary border, were forced to flee repeatedly during two wars. As an elderly man in Phum Chloi hamlet recalled:



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Very few Viet people lived west of the river in the US war years. There were no Viets in this hamlet. Khmer people had to evacuate from here in the early 1970s because of the intensification in fighting. We moved to Cambodia and were there for two years. We returned in 1973 after America left the war. Five years later we had to evacuate again when the Khmer Rouge attacked this area. They controlled this area for three months. During that time we had to relocate to the big mountain you can see from here [Nui Ba Den]. I don’t know its name.

Banditry and intimidation continued in Tay Ninh well after the end of the Khmer Rouge border incursions of the late 1970s. In the late 1980s, Khmer people in Srok Sedoh were forced to abandon their properties near the road and cluster in their present location in the interior. They told me they were chased away by bandits, robbers and threats of violence. The Cao Dai reportedly also took part in these episodes of intimidation. Areas close to the border remain insecure, as Vietnamese residents of Chau Thanh told me in 2008: The border area is very complicated. In places there is no security. Venture far from the road past Hoa Binh market and you are likely to be robbed or killed. Even members of the Vietnamese security forces have to be on guard from attacks. It is especially dangerous in the forested areas near the border. People go freely backwards and forwards across the border, selling things. Sometimes villagers from one side of the border come and steal a few cattle from a village on the other side. In reprisal, people from that village steal cattle from the offending village.

Many wats in this region were destroyed in the wars. Formerly there were 17 Khmer wats in Tay Ninh, locals maintain, more than two thirds of which were destroyed or abandoned during the Indochina wars. Six wats in Binh Phuoc reportedly were destroyed in the US war, leaving only three. Now all that is left are the razed platforms, vestigial towers or stands of sugar palm trees, with or without a community of Khmer people living nearby. Locals suspect that some of the temples were abandoned even earlier, “in the old times, during the Vietnam–Cambodia war”, as one abbot put it. A monk in Srok Sedoh, said his own temple had suffered repeated dislocations: This temple is very old. This is not its original location. Formerly it was next to the mountain. Then it was rebuilt in a new

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location in the fields. It was moved again and again until finally it was rebuilt here. According to what elderly people in the village have told me, since it was first founded this temple has been built in six different locations.

Several surviving Khmer temples were taken over by Viet monks and nuns. I was told of numerous instances in Tay Ninh where this had happened and was able to confirm two cases. Prior to 1975, Chua Cao Son and Chua Thanh Van in Go Dau District were Khmer Theravada temples in Khmer neighbourhoods. Now the Khmers have gone and they are run as Mahayana temples tended by nuns from Central Vietnam.14  In Binh Phuoc, two former Khmer temples Wat Kiriserey Prachum Chuan and Wat Neakarangsay are now managed by Viet Theravada monks for an ethnic Vietnamese lay community. Dong Nai and Vung Tau provinces each have former Khmer temples presently under the administration of the state or ethnic Vietnamese monks. One Khmer temple in Dong Nai now has an ethnic Vietnamese Theravada abbot. Its name (Chua Thai Hoa) is Vietnamese, and the ritual practice is in Vietnamese and Pali. Unusually, however, around 100 ethnic Khmer families remain affiliated to this wat and still regularly attend it for festivities. In some cases, war helped augment the Khmer presence in this uplands region. Wat Kiri Puparam, some 80 kilometres northeast of Ho Chi Minh City in Long Khanh was established in 1968. It was built to serve a group of Khmer soldiers from the Mekong Delta who were posted there, under American command, along with their wives and children. Khmer temples built in Vung Tau at that same time catered similarly to soldier migrants and their families. After 1975 these former soldiers dispersed, returned home or left for overseas. Today just one or two Khmer families live near Wat Kiri Puparam. The temple was abandoned until about 1985, when a Khmer monk from Chau Doc arrived and resided alone. He fended off attempts by Vietnamese Mahayana monks to take over the temple and land encroachments by Vietnamese neighbours, until an abbot arrived from Tra Vinh in 2008 and the wat could be properly reconstructed. The war years brought several refugee inflows to the region. In 1954–55, a wave of Catholics arrived from northern Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of them were resettled in what was then called Saigon and a broad swathe of the northeast highlands from



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Tay Ninh to Vung Tau. In 1970, Vietnamese who had been living in Cambodia arrived, fleeing anti-Vietnamese violence under Lon Nol. Another influx of diverse Cambodian-based groups arrived when the Khmer Rouge came to power. Many of these refugees from Cambodia settled in the northeast highlands. Khmers were among the multiple flows of refugees entering the region during the war years. During the French war, many Khmers from the Mekong Delta fled to Saigon for safety, joining those already resident in the city or working for the French administration. In 1947 Wat Chantarangsay was built beside a stream in today’s District 3 to serve the needs of Khmer war refugees who lacked a place to stay in the city. A Khmer man who fled from Soc Trang “because the war made it impossible to live” said that in 1954 the temple was built of leaves: “This was a Khmer neighbourhood situated between a Muslim quarter to the north and 1954 Catholics to the south. At that time the stream was wider and the flow stronger. There were more fish and fields, and fewer people.” During the US war, the number of Khmer refugees from the countryside greatly increased.15  Prior to 1975, 500 people were living in the temple, including Khmers who were soldiers and officers. The current monks’ quarters were used as a hospital. In 1964 a second war-refugee temple, Wat Polthivong, was built in Tan Binh District in a sparsely settled area surrounded by woods and marshes and some rubber trees. The founding abbot was from Soc Trang. In addition to these two landmark settlements, elderly Khmers told me that prior to 1975 there were many Khmer communities scattered all around Saigon. Vietnamese called them Xom Mien (Cambodian neighbourhoods). Then after 1975 came a fresh wave of refugees, mainly Khmers and Sino-Khmers fleeing the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Wat Chantarangsay again filled with hundreds of refugees. Many stayed in the Pali school building. After a while a processing camp was set up in Song Be to house the refugees. Dong Nai still is home to a significant number of refugees from the Khmer Rouge period including Khmer Krom who had been living in Cambodia. However, after 1975, many US war refugees living around Wat Chantarangsay and Wat Polthivong were forced to return to their home villages. Some who had been officers were re-educated and some fled overseas. Vietnamese moved into the Khmer neighbourhood around Wat Chantarangsay and the grounds were partly occupied. After 1975,

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Wat Polthivong was completely abandoned and its grounds also carved up. It had no monks and did not again operate as a temple until the late 1980s.

Asserting Khmer Precedence Many new arrivals to the northeast uplands have a pronounced sensitivity to Khmer precedence. A noteworthy feature of Tay Ninh is that a great many of its residents readily volunteer that the land they occupy once was part of Cambodia. Catholic refugees in Chau Thanh, Tay Ninh, who were resettled along the border in the 1950s were insistent on this fact: This was once Cambodian territory. You can tell by the sugar palm trees you see all about. They indicate that we Viets now are living beyond the frontiers of Vietnam. All around here are temple ruins: large stone platforms where Khmer people still come to make offerings and smaller structures where Khmer holy men once resided. You can tell they formerly were Khmer temples because of the tall trees that surround them. The buildings were destroyed but old trees have not been cut it down for they are regarded as sacred. Khmer people still live scattered around. From here towards the border, you can see their houses here and there. You see people with darker skin. Across the Ben Soi River, you’ll see many more. That river was once the border, but Viet people have moved across it and settled here and there. They take the land of others, cut down the jungle and plant rice, sugarcane and rubber. They have pushed right into Cambodia. No one can stop them. It is a free-for-all. This happened a lot during the war with Cambodia and it is still happening now.

Ethnic Vietnamese in Tay Ninh tend to be more forthcoming in recognising Khmer precedence in their locality than the state authorities, or their counterparts in any of the Mekong Delta provinces. Residents from a variety of religious, geographic and ethnic backgrounds volunteered to me that Tay Ninh had belonged to Cambodia and that Khmers had been driven out by Vietnamese settlers. I was encouraged by one local, who said she had Vietnamese blood in her veins, to visit the provincial history museum, whose maps and displays, she assured me, clearly lay out the dates of



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Vietnam’s progressive annexation of Cambodian territory. As it turns out, the museum makes no such claims. Even more remarkably, residents of this province consider many of the nominally Vietnamese religious institutions in this province to be Cambodian or “Mien” Buddhist temples. Among the structures identified to me as past or present Khmer temples were a large Catholic church, a dinh or communal house, three Mahayana Buddhist temples and a large number of Cao Dai temples or thanh that.16  This marked sensitivity to Khmer precedence and openness to non-Vietnamese histories seems to be due to the presence in Tay Ninh of large numbers of people who once lived in Cambodia and who continue to trade and maintain relations across the border. They may have imbibed a Khmer-centric view of their locality in the course of these exchanges. A contrast to this accommodative view is found among adherents to Pure Land and reformist Mayahana Buddhism. Many of them align with the official historical narrative, which treats Vietnamese as the first to open the unoccupied wastelands of the southeast for human settlement. I visited Buddhist temples in Tay Ninh and Binh Phuoc whose resident monastics had arrived from the central coast in the post-war years. Some asserted that, if Khmers live in either of these provinces, they must have migrated here from Cambodia. When I asked how long Vietnamese had lived in these parts one monk, originating from the province of Khanh Hoa, replied that Tay Ninh had belonged to Vietnam since the birth of his country. Such views reveal that ethnonationalism circulates within particularistic social networks that are by no means coterminous with the territory about which the claims are made. Perhaps the most interesting religious development in the northeast, is the implantation there of a Vietnamese variant of Theravada Buddhism, called “Primordial Buddhism of Vietnam” (Phat Giao Nguyen Thuy Viet Nam). It was founded in the late 1930s by Le Ven Giang, an ethnic Viet civil servant working in Cambodia. As explained to me by Khmer abbots in Vietnam, while Le Ven Giang was visiting Wat Ounalom in Phnom Penh he was introduced to a Pali text outlining the principles of Theravada Buddhism. He was impressed by this original and more authentic version of Buddhism that did not place reliance on Bodhisattvas and other aspects of the Mahayana Buddhism which Vietnam had inherited from China.

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Plate 7.4 The grounds of Buu Quang temple, Thu Duc

He resigned his position and took up monastic vows, receiving the dharma name Ho Tong. Returning to Vietnam, he founded the Theravada temple Chua Buu Quang in Thu Duc District of Ho Chi Minh City. In 1939 Cambodian supreme patriarch Chuon Nath presided over the consecration of the Preah Vihear. Many more were consecrated in the late colonial and postcolonial eras. Today there are over 60 Vietnamese Theravada temples in Vietnam. The vast majority of them are located in the highlands region: Ho Chi Minh City (22); Dong Nai (18); Baria-Vung Tau (8); Binh Phuoc (2); Binh Duong (1).17  A notable aspect of this transplanted faith is that, although inspired by the style of Buddhism observed in Cambodia, the practice in Vietnam has been stripped of Khmer cultural content. The monastics and laity are for the most part ethnic Vietnamese. Few followers know even a word of Khmer, which is not displayed in the temples and is not used in interactions between laity and monks. All doctrinal texts are in Vietnamese. Monks and advanced adepts



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study Pali but use Vietnamese language texts to do so. Monks and educated achars chant in Pali. The majority of laypeople chant in Vietnamese. Primordial Buddhist temples also are narrowly religious. They do not host the rich array of communal, educative and festive activities that typify life in a Khmer monastery of the Mekong Delta. Neither do they have the cultural heritage role of Khmer Krom temples, which serve as centres for the preservation, performance and transmission of Khmer artistic and mythological traditions. Followers of Vietnamese Theravada Buddhism disassociate themselves from perceptions of the Buddha as a spiritual patron and other magical and animist practices that they deem to be rife among their ethnic Vietnamese compatriots. However, they also distance themselves from the religious practice of the majority of contemporary Khmers, which is deemed to be riddled with superstition, a habitual custom inherited from their ancestors. Zealous Vietnamese Theravada converts assert that the local Khmer version of Buddhism is not the true primordial Buddhism, which can be accessed only by studying the teachings of Buddha, conveniently translated from Sanskrit and Pali into Vietnamese. A parallel recuperative project by newcomers to the region has been the attempt by Khmer monks from the Mekong Delta to rebuild Khmer temples and monastic communities devastated by war. Monks from Tra Vinh began arriving in Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh and Dong Nai in the 1990s to oversee what they portray as a cultural revitalisation project. Additional support was lent by Khmer abbots in Ho Chi Minh City, mobilising funds from laypeople. They encountered a situation where the majority of Khmer temples had been devastated or abandoned. Those that remained standing had few or no monastics and serviced a scattered and culturally disoriented Khmer population. As the abbot of a temple in Binh Phuoc recalled: Until the mid-1990s there were no monks in this temple. Until 2002 the temple had no abbot. As a result, Khmer people here are not familiar with monks. Sometimes they would run away when the monks approached them. When monks first arrived here, only 20 per cent of laypersons understood the basic customs and religion. Local people didn’t know how to write Khmer. Only thanks to monks who came up from Tra Vinh do some now know how to write.

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This task of restoration is in some respects a monastic civilising project. An elderly achar in Tay Ninh said: “In the past we lacked many things. We did not know many things. Thanks to the abbot the situation of the Khmer is getting better. We are learning again.” However, monks who have sought to reconstitute monastic life in the northeast report that they have encountered numerous obstacles. They have to ask permission if they want to build anything or undertake large repairs. Unapproved constructions have been demolished by the local authorities. Monks have to obtain permission each time they want to hold festivals and justify all aspects of the programme and expenditure. The visiting monks are closely watched by the police and some report they are not permitted to raise funds or invite laypersons to donate funds. When they first arrived, the monks from Tra Vinh organised Khmer literacy classes. But the local authorities created many obstacles, making it impossible to continue the classes. Also dispersed Khmer lay affiliates found it difficult to get to the temples for classes.18  Nowhere in the northeast highlands is the Buddhist study programme Salah Putikah Saksa taught. Monks who wish to undertake higher-level studies in Khmer and Buddhism must travel to Tra Vinh. Local monks attributed this official resistance to the authorities’ unfamiliarity with Khmer customs, the lack of a Khmer Buddhist association, and the lack of official sympathy for the Khmer cultural revitalisation project.

Repopulating the Uplands Kampuchea Krom’s northeast highlands (Vietnam’s southeast) feature in the Khmer Buddhist imaginary as Kampuchea Krom’s most ancient and primitive region. This vast region is depicted in foreign accounts as the place from which Khmers were expelled earliest and have experienced the longest and most intense assimilation. There, tiny, vestigial and scattered Khmer communities subsist today among a preponderance of Vietnamese-identifying people, who often recognise Khmer precedence in this region, while at the same time selectively appropriating Khmer elements for their religious needs. And yet these trends do not capture the complete story. In recent years the highlands have been destination for one of the most dramatic migrations of Khmer Krom people to have taken place in the modern era. This migration, whose source mostly is the Mekong Delta, has repopulated the northeast with many tens of thousands



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of Khmer-speaking people, the majority of them youthful, and engaged in the dynamic industrial, service and educational sectors. This recolonisation of the northeast has reversed long-term migratory and demographic trends that most observers once thought to be irreversible, and forces a radical rethink of the cultural character imputed to the Khmer inhabitants of this region. Around 1990, the region surrounding Ho Chi Minh City began its post-war metamorphosis into an economic growth engine and foreign investment magnet, becoming Vietnam’s leading centre for commerce, the service sector, construction and industry. Industrial estates and housing developments mushroomed in outlying metropolitan districts. Forests and fields were cleared in Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Baria-Vung Tau provinces, whose red undulating terrain was soon blanketed by factory complexes and vast rubber plantations. A host of family-owned urban businesses swelled into middle-sized enterprises with a thirst for labour. The urban middle class grew and with new wealth and time constraints came a demand for reliable domestic service workers. Since the beginning of the boom, the region has drawn in millions of workers from poorer areas of northern and central Vietnam and the Mekong Delta. In the early 2000s, to meet the region’s still unsatisfied need for cheap labour, businesses and labour recruiters began targeting Khmer-populated areas of the Mekong Delta. From the Khmer perspective, the barriers to entering the city were daunting. In 2000, I spoke with landless Khmer farm workers in Kompong Krobei Khleac (White Buffalo Port), Ca Mau, asking if they had considered migrating north to seek employment. To them Prey Nokor was a strange and dangerous land, unimaginably far away, with a foreign language and culture. Because they knew no one who lived there and did not even know how to get there, the possibility of working there did not exist. Around 2005 I spoke with female farmers in Knong Srok, Tra Vinh, who doubted many people from their region migrated to work in the city and said only people who were desperately poor would venture such a risky and degrading move. As late as 2007, unemployed youths in Khmer-dominated areas from Tri Ton to Tra Cu were telling me they lacked sufficient knowledge of Vietnamese language and culture to penetrate the urban labour market. However, by the mid-2000s the exodus indeed already had begun and a significant number of Khmer labourers from the delta

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were working in the fabled “companies” (kromhuan) of the forest capital, “Prey Nokor”. Many found their way to employment in the city via relatives, schools and monastic networks, and personal contacts with traders and tourists visiting their region. Others signed up at labour recruitment fairs and employment information sessions. The majority of Khmer migrant labourers are young. They work in low skilled jobs in which the reputation that Khmers have for honesty and endurance is highly esteemed. A great number work in small-scale family enterprises as waitresses, cooks, cleaners, storemen, packers and parking attendants, often sleeping and eating at the premises where they work. Many others serve as live-in nannies, housekeepers, gardeners and security guards in the homes of their employers. A significant number do processing work in factories, living in a company dormitory or rented accommodation near the industrial zone; others work on farms, orchards and rubber plantations outside the urban precincts. Powerful push factors were responsible for this unprecedented exodus of Khmer rural people. As noted in the surveys of other Khmer-settled sub-regions, Khmers in many localities never adequately recovered from the severe dislocations and loss of land experienced during the Indochina wars. The post-war intensification and commercialisation of agriculture further eroded the economic standing of Khmer farmers, who were unable to recuperate the high costs associated with intensive farming or pay for the factor inputs, social services, and consumables obtained through commercial channels. Once land markets were officially sanctioned, Khmers tended to pay off their substantial debts by selling their land. The pesticides required by the new rice varieties poisoned many of the natural resources—among them fresh water and a multitude of aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals—that Khmers previously had relied upon to ensure subsistence security. Added to the environmental destabilisation was the erosion in Khmer people’s cultural selfconfidence. Their mode of life was criticised as dysfunctional in the public sphere and they were exposed via school, media and interactions with new social others to alternative cultural standards and lifestyles which were promoted as superior to the allegedly insular, outmoded and impoverished Khmer status quo. By the early 2000s these factors were operating in concert upon Khmer rural youth, causing many to regard continued residence in the land of their ancestors both untenable and unappealing.



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In a bid to stem the flow, local authorities have encouraged foreign companies to invest in rural areas where poverty and youth unemployment are high. Taiwanese-invested footwear factories in Tieu Can and Tra Cu, seafood-processing plants in Soc Trang, Hau Giang and Kien Giang, a cashew processing facility in Tri Ton, and a food processing zone in Tra Noc are among the large facilities located in Khmer-settled regions that employ a substantial number of Khmer labourers. Khmer people’s participation in these rural industrialisation initiatives can be contextualised within longstanding vernacular modernisation trends evident in the various Khmerpopulated localities surveyed in this study. Yet these schemes’ capacity to absorb labour and meet rising expectations is limited and they have not staunched the flow of young Khmer labourers into the larger and more dynamic industrial hub of Prey Nokor. Indeed they may facilitate the exodus, for they equip young Khmers from farming families with language and industrial labour competencies that they can apply to obtain work further away from home. Khmer-speaking people now reside in their tens of thousands in the vast industrialised zone they refer to as Prey Nokor.19  It is a triangle-shaped region that stretches from O Cap on the coast to the Cambodian border in the west and has its southern apex in Prey Nokor proper. Few of these Khmer speakers are autochthonous to the region in which they now live. Environmental, economic and war refugees, students and labour migrants, the majority comes from the Mekong Delta. Their visibility in this region is not great. They speak mostly Vietnamese with their employers, colleagues and neighbours and live scattered in a host of neighbourhoods and enterprises throughout an urban conurbation whose population exceeds ten million. Their livelihood activities as wage workers in industrial, commercial and administrative settings have some continuities with those undertaken by their parents, but contrast with the small-scale agrarian and subsistence lifestyle stereotypically associated with Khmers. The majority of them are of working age; infant children, elderly parents and grandparents remain behind in their home villages. It is perhaps too early to predict whether they may settle permanently in their new home. The ones I know about are mostly renting or boarding in their place of employment. Unlike in their disparate Khmer-speaking places of origin, the world in which they now live is culturally Vietnamese, suffused with the language, symbolic representations, bodily dispositions and other

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reference points of southern Vietnamese urban culture. Their mother tongue is not spoken in public, official or commercial spheres. There are no Khmer-language libraries, newspapers, shop signage, billboards, or television channels in this metropolitan space. Khmer is not taught in state schools. Children of Khmer labourers do not have access to the elementary Khmer studies programme taught in rural temples. Khmer calendrical festivals are not celebrated by the urban authorities and Khmer labourers rarely are able to return to their home communities to mark these occasions. The annual vacation in most workplaces falls on the Sino-Vietnamese New Year, which obliges urban Khmer labourers to commemorate it instead. For these Khmer Krom labour migrants, industrialisation and modernisation imply submission to the ritual co-ordinates of a parochial Vietnamese worldview.

Urban Temples and Khmer Community Widely dispersed throughout Prey Nokor, Khmer migrants have few opportunities to meet each other or bind into a new community. And the few Khmer wats in this region struggle to fulfil the role of community centre that their rural counterparts perform so well. Abbots of the two main metropolitan Khmer temples organise activities to celebrate the traditional Khmer calendrical festivals. The celebrations can be extremely effervescent. In 2008, pchum ben was very crowded with Khmer music and dancing in both temples. Khmer people came from all over the city. One senior monk observed: The music, entertainment, and offerings during the festival in the city are much more lively than in the countryside. People here have nothing all year and they go all-out for festivals such as this. It provides them with a momentary pleasure in their difficult lives.

However, only a small fraction of the Khmer people residing in the city finds the time to attend. The alms round is not conducted. Officially it is not permitted in Ho Chi Minh City, but even if it were, monks would be unable to reach the homes of the scattered migrant population. Labourers do not have the time or means to bring food to the temple. Unlike in the Mekong Delta, this region does not have any neighbourhood offering halls (tha la, sala ten or



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sala thien), which enable monks to visit neighbourhoods far from the main temple so that local laypersons can make merit. Few Khmers observe the weekly vow-keeping days, which follow a lunar calendar and are mostly for the elderly in any case. Buddhist annual ceremonies such as vesak, vossa and kathin are not well attended by urban Khmers. The ones I have attended in the city were attended by a far greater number of ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese. Another factor which makes it difficult for these urban temples to serve as community hubs for Khmer migrant workers is that they have become spiritual centres for urban-based ethnic Viets. A stream of supplicants—few of them Khmer—arrives to seek the monks’ services in ritual exorcisms and blessings. Khmer monks are believed to command unrivalled power over the world of the spirits. The monks are constantly being whisked away on motorbikes and in air-conditioned taxis to attend to the blessing of a new house or business in the suburbs. The temples also have been captured by Vietnamese followers of Theravada Buddhism, the so-called Primordial Buddhism of Vietnam (Phat Giao Nguyen Thuy Viet Nam), who utilise them for their own religious ends. Several educated, well-connected and motivated followers of this denomination have assumed influential positions on the management committee of Wat Chantarangsay. They have won this position for they are responsible for a great deal of the funding for daily offerings, renovations and support for individual monks in this temple. Wat Polthivong has a written roster for enthusiastic, wealthy and well-organised laypersons—most of them middle class ethnic Chinese and Viets—to bring food offerings for monks in the temple. The result is that these temples have become effectively Vietnamese ritual spaces. Ethnic Viet laypersons come to the temples on a daily basis to socialise and chat with each other and their favourite monks. As noted, ethnic Viet laypersons flock to the temples for Buddhist ceremonies. They conduct chants in Vietnamese rather than in Pali, while the monks deliver dharma talks in Vietnamese. On one occasion, a small delegation of Khmer migrant labourers who had hired a bus to travel from Binh Duong to mark the commencement of the rainy season retreat sat shyly at the back of the offering hall while Viet laypersons, sitting at the front of the hall and comprising the majority of lay participants, monopolised the ritual interaction. Following Vietnamese language chants to the

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Buddha and monks, led by Viet achars, the abbot led the monks in reciprocal Pali chants. He then delivered a half hour Vietnamese language sermon. The Viet participants listened intently, facing the abbot, while the Khmer guests sat around in small groups, talked amongst themselves, sipped their drinks and smoked. These ethnic Vietnamese laypeople support the Khmer Theravada temples because they consider the Buddhism practised there to be doctrinally purer than Mahayana Buddhism. However, they are not sympathetic to the cultural and ritual dimensions of Khmer monasticism. Few of these habitués of the Khmer temples speak Khmer. They support monks in their Buddhist studies and use Vietnamese texts to teach Pali to ethnic Viet children in the temple. However, Khmer literacy classes are not offered for Khmer children. One management committee member offered me Vietnamese language dharma books to acquaint myself with the essence of the doctrine. At the same time, he derided the chanting ritual presided over by the abbot for a Khmer lay couple as “superstition”. He listened intently to a Khmer legend as it was being related to me by one of the monks and then laughed openly and scornfully at its irrational mystical aspects. Some of the Khmer monks seem to have internalised this dismissive attitude. One said the dharma talks are given only in Vietnamese because only Vietnamese want to listen to them. “By contrast, Khmers usually just light incense. They just pray for their fortune and their ancestors: their spiritual inclinations are very basic. They don’t seek sermons or deep understanding of their religion.” Another lamented that youthful Khmer migrant labourers in the city are too busy making money and having fun to care about maintaining their culture or religious beliefs. “They enjoy coming to festivals organised by Khmer temples, but in truth these occasions offer only an ephemeral pleasure and no lasting benefit.” However, the headlong rush of rural Khmer youth into urban modernity is nowhere more pronounced than among the monastic population itself. In the early 1990s, Ho Chi Minh City’s two Khmer temples began to be used as dormitories by Khmer youths from the Mekong Delta who came to the city to undertake higher education in its universities and colleges. Dozens of Khmer monks and an even greater number of lay students use these temples as bases to reside while studying in the city. These students are studying secular subjects with Vietnamese language curricula. On graduating



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Plate 7.5 Dormitory rooms for monks and students, Wat Chantarangsay, District 3

they will return home to marry and work, or stay on to work in the city. The swelling of these temples with Khmer monks and lay students offers an impression that Khmer monasticism is alive and well in the city. Yet their use of these Khmer institutions primarily to obtain a Vietnamese language education for personal advance differs from in much of the Mekong Delta where the emphasis in most temples is on Khmer cultural preservation. Indeed this movement could seem like an insidious form of assimilation, offending purist views of Khmer cultural identity. However, their use of these temples is consistent with the traditional function of ordination in Khmer society as a means to acquire powerful knowledge, prestige and social mobility. And, although the language of education is Vietnamese, the reliance by poor rural students on urban monasteries to obtain a toehold in the city is identical to the contemporary role of urban temples in Cambodia’s large cities.

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At the same time, these Khmer youths’ use of the temples to pursue practical contemporary knowledge could be seen as inconsistent with Vietnamese laypeople’s view of the temples as gateways to a primordial religious experience. Khmer monks are in demand among lay congregations owing to their knowledge of Pali and the belief that they embody the primordial essence of the religion. Devout laypersons fund their residence in the city in return for which they believe they earn merit far in excess of what can be obtained by supporting Mahayana monks. The fact that the monks speak Vietnamese conveniently enables this connection to the past to occur. However, while the laypeople are relying on these Khmer monks to access a tradition unsullied by latter-day accretions, the monks rely on laypeople to scramble into modernity. Another irony is found in the fact that the monks make the additional money they require for their studies by providing, for a sizeable fee, Pali language chants for exorcisms, house blessings and other uncanonical activities. Intriguingly, these poor Khmer youths are able to finance their degrees in computer science, law, engineering and medicine owing to the fetishisation by middle class Vietnamese of Khmer monks as innately in touch with the world of the spirits. Indeed this practical and worldly Khmer approach to monasticism is so powerful that the city’s two small Khmer temples cannot begin to answer the demand. One result of the Khmer thirst for urban modernity is that many of the Vietnamese Theravada temples in the city and surrounding provinces are being taken over by Khmer monks from the Mekong Delta who use them as provisional student dormitories. The student monks are welcome by Vietnamese laypeople for, as embodiments of the authentic faith, they satisfy the laypeople’s thirst for unblemished tradition. In many temples, the monks have been joined by an increasing number of resident Khmer lay students. In some temples, Khmer monks have taken up the position of abbots. On holidays, when friends and relatives in the city come to visit, these Vietnamese-founded temples become Khmer-speaking public spaces. Hence sites throughout the northeast highlands are being occupied by increasing numbers of Khmers from the Mekong Delta who find them a congenial home in which to pursue worldly, nontraditional and non-canonical ends. In the latest phase of the Khmer recolonisation of Prey Nokor, a supposedly primordial Vietnamese version of Buddhism inspired by Khmer practice, yet stripped of



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its this-worldly, mystical and Khmer cultural dimensions, is being reclaimed by Khmers and re-embodied in contemporary Khmer religious actors. However, theirs is a vernacular and hardly purist version of the faith which they deploy to advance their own interests. Through this means Khmers are re-establishing tenure in the ancient forest capital in pursuit of a Khmer vision of modernisation.

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Conclusion The term Khmer Krom (Khmers of Kampuchea Krom) defines the predicament of a people whom the nations of Cambodia and Vietnam each claims as its own. Meaning Khmers of Lower Cambodia, this Khmer-language ethnonym expresses a Khmer nationalist perspective on a population and territory said to have been separated from Cambodia during the process of French decolonisation and wrongfully placed under Vietnamese administration. The Vietnamese official conception of these Khmers as a national minority recruits them into the multi-ethnic community of the Vietnamese nation while rejecting their historical ties to the Khmer kingdom. Although these contesting claims on the Khmers of Lower Cambodia / the Khmer minority of Vietnam are held with equal passion, each is coloured by deep ambivalence. Many Cambodians suspect that the Khmer Krom have been subject to Vietnamese assimilatory rule for so long that they are no longer fully Khmer. For their part, Vietnamese officials lament the recalcitrance of a minority group whom they label pejoratively as backward, insular and marginal, and whose continuing identification with Khmer nationalist mythology threatens the integrity of the Vietnamese nation. The predicament for the people this study identifies as Khmer Krom is to be considered the rightful subjects of two different nations, neither of which fully accepts them as its own. This study explores an alternative approach to the Khmer Krom that locates them in the environmental context of the lower Mekong. Khmer people’s adaptations to this unique and complex environmental setting and their engagement in its contested history embodies a way of being Khmer that challenges the stereotypes about Khmer identity generated in the nation-building projects of both Vietnam and Cambodia. Khmers have secured tenure in this region through a combination of flexible adaptations to diverse environments, technological innovations and participation in a variety of economic, social and religious exchanges. They have coped with the 252



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claims made by other groups in this region by strategically drawing upon local resources, self-help networks and understandings, while also selectively engaging with translocal institutions, projects and ideologies. By recasting Buddhist and folk cosmologies and improvising stories of great richness, they have imbued their diverse local ecologies, circumstances and histories with universal significance. Through such practices, the Khmer Krom have taken a leading role in the transformation of their region and in the redefinition of what it means to be Vietnamese and Khmer. I use the name Kampuchea Krom to refer to this region for it is in wide circulation among its Khmer residents. This Khmerlanguage term can be interpreted as expressing a sense of belonging to Cambodia and it is seen by Vietnamese government officials as a cover for actual irredentist aspirations. However, better than any other, the term summarises the sense that Khmers in this region have of both belonging to but standing apart from the vicissitudes of the modern Cambodian nation that emerged out of a long and complex history of imperialism in this region. Khmers in this region have been inspired by this project and they have taken part in it. At the same time they have been negatively impacted by its excesses and denigrated by the parochial nationalist conceit that takes Cambodia as the model for what it means to be Khmer. The term Kampuchea Krom, therefore, is an apt summation for the local Khmer experience of looking up to the modern idea of Cambodia, but also being pitied or looked down upon by those who take this country as the apotheosis of the Khmer historical tradition. The term Kampuchea Krom also focuses attention on the difficulties that local Khmers have in relating to the Vietnamese idea of this region as southern Vietnam. This is an idea of the region as a “new land” with a 300-year-old history that began when Saigon and surrounding territories were settled by Vietnamese migrants and incorporated under Vietnamese jurisdiction. Such an idea contradicts historical evidence that this region already was inhabited by Khmers and under the influence of the Khmer court. It is particularly unsettling for local Khmers to accept the fiction that their history began only when outsiders arrived in this region, a perspective which denies them a history of their own and sees them both as peripheral to and derivative of a 4,000-year-old Vietnamese national project that has its current centre in Hanoi. The term Kampuchea Krom is thus psychologically more acceptable to local Khmer people than

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the idea of southern Vietnam. Their usage has the additional merit of being eminently accommodating of current political arrangements for it refers to region once under Khmer court authority, but now under Vietnamese control. This study approaches Kampuchea Krom through an investigation of seven main sub-regions, each the topic of its own chapter. It thus challenges the idea that some Khmers may have of being part of a unified Khmer tradition or indivisible in relation to the attempts by modern states to subdivide this territory into own administrative sub-regions. This schema has been generated from my observations of significant differences in the ecological practices and histories of Khmers across this region. It draws also on legends and story-telling practices that give voice to the consciousness among Khmers in various localities of what they share. It also relies on the contrasts Khmer residents of various localities draw between different localities, sometimes in response to my own puzzlement at the differences, and based on their experiences of travelling beyond their localities and interacting with Khmers from other regions. This schema, therefore, opens windows onto how the region is conceptualised and experienced from a variety of locally and historically embedded Khmer perspectives, giving life to the notion of Kampuchea Krom and avoiding subordination to a politically dominant perspective or simplistic caricatures about the milieus in which Khmer people live. This concluding chapter draws together the findings from my survey of these sub-regions in an attempt to identify commonalities and key differences. It shows that the semi-autonomous yet selectively engaged mode by which Khmers lived in this region in the mid-twentieth century has become increasingly difficult to sustain as it has been transformed into a state managed, environmentally industrialised, agrarian commodity production site. The crises engendered by these attempts to make the region bring value to the Vietnamese nation have been the context in which local Khmers increasingly have attempted to reclaim the region as Kampuchea Krom. Their projects to reclaim Khmer sovereignty are, however, plural and are deeply inflected by local environmental patterns, histories and cosmologies. Their synthesis of these diverse experiences as Kampuchea Krom also sheds light on their view of the modern Vietnamese and Cambodian nations as projects whose origins are decidedly local and Khmer.



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Autonomous Adaptations to a Unique Environment Among the factors that have enabled Khmer people to thrive in the downstream reaches of the Mekong River basin, none is more decisive than their ability to overcome this region’s acute scarcity of land and water. As their name for the region, Kampuchea Krom, suggests, the land’s elevation is on average much lower than in Cambodia. Much of it is inundated and subject to seawater incursions, habitable dry land is in short supply, and the soil and water are strongly affected by saline and acid. The Khmer Krom have flourished in areas where the shortage of habitable land and potable water is particularly acute. The secret of their success in these adverse conditions has been their precise knowledge of the properties of landforms, soil conditions and seasonal water cycles, and the pooling of knowledge and labour, especially in communal water provision. Colonial and postcolonial governments regarded such areas as insalubrious and underpopulated and attempted massive environmental re-engineering projects in order to realise their productive potential. However, Khmers show that a different way of living in such an environment has long been possible. Cracking the twin problems of land and water scarcity gave Khmer people access to coastal, riverine and mountainous environments which, up to the closing decade of the twentieth century, still were extremely rich in natural plant and animal resources. The natural resource base in areas where Khmer Krom people live—in the margins between swamp and sea, mountains and plains, and freshwater and saltwater zones — is diverse and also seasonably variable. This abundance and diversity in natural resources permitted relative ease of living throughout the year, and enabled a sense of security to develop. Such an environment was conducive to the emergence of a sufficiency ethic. There was little incentive to engage in high-risk speculative activity either in the local area or far afield because of the existence of a secure and reliable year-round supply of resources. It also encouraged a culture of local self-reliance. Because resources were locally abundant, Khmers had little need to seek outside assistance, make a livelihood away from home, or subordinate their livelihood strategies exclusively to participation in the translocal commodity economy. This enabled them to practise a form of optional autarchy, selectively engaging exchanges that could complement what they could obtain locally and opting out of dangerous, unfamiliar, or unappealing exchanges and propositions.

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The evidence from this survey demonstrates that flexible adaptation to diverse environments has been key to the vitality of Khmer society in this environmentally complex region. Contradicting stereotypes of the Khmers as an inland people, Khmer Krom have been highly successful in maritime regions, where they have put coastal dune arrays, estuaries and mountains to a multitude of uses and have invested these important landforms with rich cosmological significance. They have drawn resources from the ocean, saline swamps and estuaries, and have used land, sea and river routes to connect to each other and the world beyond their settlements. Khmers also abound along freshwater and saltwater rivers, which they have used for settlement, transport, agriculture, fishing, trade and religious purposes. Mountain slopes have provided a supply of forest resources, water and land for residence in regions affected by flooding and water shortages. Khmer people’s ability to thrive in this variety of non-classical settings reveals an ecological repertoire that is highly adaptable and context sensitive. This flexible orientation conflicts with the theme of environmental over-reach notoriously associated with the classical civilisation centred on Angkor and the modernist agrarian development projects of the French, Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge regimes. Khmers have been strongly affected by the massive modifications to the ecology and economy of their region, whose instigators usually are said to be outsiders. However, this survey shows that Khmers have been innovators. By absorbing new techniques and modifying traditional technologies they have participated in the transformation of the regional environment. Some examples of technologies that have evolved in response to changing circumstances are communal wells now sealed with cement, and houses that today predominantly are built on silt platforms rather than stilts owing to the shrinking availability of hardwood timber. Boats once used for transport, earth moving and religious purposes have been motorised and are now also used ingeniously as an accessory in intensive wet rice production. The modernisation of transport frequently has entailed the mechanisation of existing vernacular transport systems and technologies, rather than the introduction of entirely new modes of transport. Highways, airports and long-distance boat services developed by governments, militaries and commercial interests for inter-regional transport rely upon the self-same natural formations



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that the Khmers long have used for their own local travel and for trade. In a region dominated by an industrialised and commoditised agrarian economy, Khmers continue to rely upon an array of localised hunting, gathering and resource-sharing strategies, leading to frequent allegations that their way of life is primitive and stubbornly pre-modern. However, this survey reveals that Khmers long have been active participants in the commoditised agrarian economy of their region. Since at least the French colonial period Khmers have been crucial actors in the industrial production of salt, rice and rubber for export, and their contemporary involvement in shrimp ponds, commercial gardening, multi-crop hybrid rice agriculture and ocean fishing shows this pattern of engagement continues. Their ongoing recourse to localised hunting and gathering activities can be contextualised historically as a flexible use of local knowledge and opportunities that both facilitates their participation in the modern agrarian economy and mitigates its adverse consequences. At the same time their reputation as trusted providers of traditional herbal medicines for the booming pilgrimage industry shows the new contexts in which their local knowledge is fetishised and commoditised, precisely because it is considered indigenous, and hence superior to modern knowledge. Khmers have responded to the systemic inequalities marking life in this contested and commoditised region by collaborating with proximate neighbours in resource sharing, risk mitigation, education, social welfare provision and protection from disease, suffering and warfare. All of these activities centre on their temples, which serve as multifunctional community institutions. Supported, staffed and governed by local people these institutions confer the highest prestige and authority recognised in Khmer communities. Locals or outsiders may succeed in their economic, political dealings in the wider world but command recognition in local eyes only by channelling the results of those dealings into material contributions to temples. Temples also open to a world beyond, providing a traditional avenue of educational and social mobility to centres in Cambodia. The temples serve as sites for displaying the knowledge, capacities and artefacts brought back by those returning from prestigious centres beyond the local area, making these local institutions charismatic nodes of a rural cosmopolitan tradition.

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Khmers of this region share a sense of belonging to a common Khmer cultural tradition in which being Buddhist defines what it means to be Khmer. However, there are important regional differences. Khmers living in the coastal plain north of the Bassac River, are connected by a sophisticated educational network that joins villages together by the journeys their residents take from monastery to monastery to gain instruction in a Khmer cultural tradition that is widely believed to be under assault by exogenous political and economic forces. Buddhism is also a key focus for Khmers living south of the Bassac but the ethos of this loosely integrated multicultural estuarine region is more trade oriented and outward looking. In Khmer riverside settlements throughout the Mekong Delta, boats have been just as important as Buddhist temples as a focus of livelihoods, communal and religious life, inter-village festivals and origin myths. Khmers of the western mountainous regions share ecological, economic, sectarian and kin affiliations with those who lived in proximate settlements across the border that are perhaps more significant than those shared with ethnic cohorts living elsewhere in the region. Uniting them is the idea that they are all Khmers, however, their practical realisations of this identity differs from one locality to the next.

Reclaiming Kampuchea Krom The timeframe covered in this study, dating from the mid-twentieth century, was a period of immense contestation and change in the lower Mekong region. A succession of brutal wars fought around competing visions for this region’s postcolonial future were succeeded by dramatic attempts to re-engineer this region’s natural environment and equally concerted efforts to transform its economy, society and culture. The divisive and frequently destructive effects of these claims on this region are suppressed in a Vietnamese official narrative that characterises this period as an era of the defence, rebuilding and global re-integration of the Vietnamese nation. The complex and profound changes taking place within this region during this period of Vietnamese nation-building point equally to the hollowness of the Cambodian nationalist portrayal of this region as the part of Cambodia that remains under Vietnamese rule. The effects of these developments on Khmers in this region are not well understood, however, accounts by indigenous rights activists, foreign scholars



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and international agencies frequently emphasise themes of loss, destruction, assimilation and marginalisation of a culturally distinctive people and way of life. The Khmer Krom oral histories profiled in this study often emphasise the destructive consequences of twentieth-century nationbuilding efforts in their localities. However, these accounts also show this period to have been a time of productive self-becoming for Khmer Krom people. Complicating portrayals of their predicament as the victims of powerful external forces, their accounts show that Khmer people throughout this region have asserted agency in these developments and have influenced the outcomes. Frequently resisting externally generated policies and processes to preserve the status quo in their localities, they also have engaged these processes by drawing on their existing resources and capacities. Although the transformations they have experienced are frequently characterised as abrupt disjunctures and tragic loss, the changes also display continuities with the pre-existing situation in their diverse localities. Asserting a degree of co-authorship in these processes they have assimilated the changes and displacements they have experienced to their own understandings. This survey offers new insights into the nam tien, the Vietnamese southwards migration, a process by which the Mekong Delta is said to have become substantially Vietnamese at the expense of its indigenous Khmer population. Existing scholarship concentrates on the displacement of Khmers from localities within this region in the pre-colonial and colonial eras. Evidence from this survey shows that Vietnamese migrants have continued to move into and take over Khmer-settled lands up to the present. Through the region, Khmer residents of riverside, coastal and mountainside settlements speak of a situation only a half-century ago when Khmers were once the preponderant residents of settlements that are now predominantly Vietnamese. Khmers who were displaced from freshwater rivers in the central delta during the First and Second Indochina wars situate their experiences of military induced displacement within a much longer history of Vietnamese encroachment into Khmer-settled riverside locations. But the processes and agents that have been responsible for Khmer refugee flight in the modern era are complex. French and US military actions were centrally responsible for the major Khmer refugee movements that occurred in the First and Second Indochina

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wars. In the Vietnam–Khmer border war, it was Khmer Rouge troops who forced Khmers out of their borderland settlements. Since the 1990s, large number of Khmers has been dispossessed by processes of agrarian commoditisation, infrastructure development and environmental degradation. Although the policies that triggered such displacements were implemented by the Vietnamese government, they were strongly supported and funded by foreign governments and international development agencies. Much of the movement experienced by Khmer people of this region since the mid-twentieth century is characterised as involuntary. Very much in the nam tien model, these relocations were forced upon people who lacked the power, protection or other resources to enable them to remain at home. However, oral histories reveal that migration also has positive cultural precedents, such as removing to remote areas to set up religious communities, or migrating to centres in present-day Cambodia to study, work or advance their social standing. This survey shows that Khmers have exercised their own migratory agency in the modern context, settling proactively along newly established canals and roads, travelling to temples and cities to pursue their education, and migrating to work as domestic, agrarian and industrial labourers. The most significant migration of recent times, the mass movement of Khmers from the Mekong Delta north to the factories and schools of Prey Nokor, inverts the standard nam tien narrative and repopulates with Khmers a region that Khmers are said to have long ago abandoned. Many Khmer Krom intellectuals and monks express fears about the disintegration of their identity and memory as a result of losing access to a state whose mission is the preservation and cultivation of a Khmer cultural outlook. The legend of Queen Neang Chan told by Khmers of the coastal region south of the Bassac River appears to give eloquent voice to such concerns. Chased from the palace of the Khmer king, she fled east along a local river system that drains this part of the eastern seaboard, strewing cultural artefacts in her wake, then throwing herself into the water where her body disintegrated into a multitude of animals and plants. This tale of abandonment and decomposition can be read as a vivid depiction of the degenerative state of Khmer cultural identity in a culturally pluralist river basin where Khmer literacy is low and Chinese or Vietnamese serve as the lingua franca in Khmer people’s interactions with others. State primary schools, markets and gambling and drinking parties



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frequently are found inside the Khmer Buddhist temples of this region. Buddhist meditation is no longer practised, the monastic curriculum is full of Vietnamese secular subjects and the highest level Buddhist educational facility is widely regarded as a supplement for Vietnamese secular education. But if disintegration is to be considered the leitmotif for the Khmers of this river basin, it also would need to be extended to the other groups who live in this multi-ethnic region. Its many residents who descend from migrants from southern China, seldom can recall their Chinese ancestor’s place of origin and are more literate in Vietnamese, Khmer or Pali than they are in Chinese. Self-identifying Vietnamese residents often have a tenuous grasp on the contours of Vietnamese national history and geography and many abandon Vietnamese education at an early age to pursue commerce or migratory labour. The motifs of mingling and regeneration may be a more appropriate way to characterise the cosmopolitan identities of the residents of this multicultural coastal region. The legend of Queen Neang Chan whose body disintegrated into the natural species that nurture livelihoods of the littoral population shows that from decomposition comes renewal. Renditions of her myth offered by Khmers in this region frequently are described as fragmentary and poorly remembered. However, in contributing episodes to this myth that draw upon local experiences and recent histories, they are renewing the life of this myth which is enriched with the partial perspectives of multiple local narrators. Their decentred narrative and ritual practices can be described as a confederate mode of being Khmer in which parts are constitutive of the whole rather than being subordinate to it. For Khmers of the coastal region north of the Bassac River, the ascendancy of Vietnamese national institutions in the modern era brought challenges for which they were culturally prepared. Despite the strong historical consciousness of many in this region that they were once subjects of the Khmer court, few entertain hopes that reunification with Cambodia would improve their situation, for the Khmer court is considered to have been historically remote and weak, as well as factionalised and easily bought. By contrast, the Vietnamese state has long been far more powerful, proximate and insinuating, but the dominant view among Khmers in this region is that the present state’s agenda, like that of its predecessors, remains to extinguish Khmer culture and recalibrate the Khmer Krom as

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Vietnamese. Their conceptualisation of political society as untrustworthy and dangerous reflects a Buddhist perspective about the corrupt, evanescent and illusory nature of profane society. More specifically, their mistrust conforms to a cosmological understanding among Khmers in this archipelagic littoral region that the environment outside of their temple communities is alien, hostile and potentially contaminating. Through their temples they practise a decentred mode of cultural transmission in which their identity as Khmers is maintained by disengaging from the world outside of the temple community, which is deemed the world outside of culture. Such acts of asceticism mean one foregoes wealth and power, but it is this act of sacrifice that ensures cultural continuity. Monastic vocations, and the acts of students and lay men and women are organised around this sacrificial project. Informing this project are the examples of the legendary predecessors who sacrificed their lives to preserve Khmer culture. This emphasis on preservation suggests that continuity with a glorious Khmer past continues to embody what it means to be Khmer. However, it is clear that in Buddhism, many Khmer Krom consider that they are practising a more civilised and enlightened form of sovereignty than that once deployed in the time of the Khmer empire. Whereas once, Khmers conquered others and defended their kingdom with weapons and magic, now they govern themselves and control their circumstances through literacy, books and education. The forest into which the court’s representatives once retreated to mount defensive forays against Vietnamese invaders is now contained within the walls of temples where it produces an environment conducive to meditation and study. The scholar monk and the educated lay man and woman have replaced the king as the embodiment of Khmer power. Education is a means to self-empowerment but one can gain it in many ways. North of the Bassac River, temples teach a comprehensive Khmer-language curriculum combining Khmer and Pali literacy and Buddhist law and doctrine with subjects drawn from the modern Cambodian education system. South of the Bassac the curriculum and language of instruction is identical to Vietnamese state schools, but is supplemented with Buddhism, Khmer and Pali subjects. In areas where temple-based education has been traditionally weak or historically undermined, the knowledge one needs to function in contemporary society is to be gained in ethnic minority



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boarding schools or Vietnamese state schools. For many others, once basic literacy and numeracy in Vietnamese or Khmer is acquired, education consists of learning practical and technical skills in the agrarian sector or in urban workplaces and factories. This brings into view another contention of the nam tien narrative, that Khmers have been assimilated through their exposure to expanding Vietnamese political and cultural institutions. In the period under review Vietnamese states have assertively induced Khmers to study in Vietnamese language schools in preference to their traditional temple-based education. Since the late 1990s I have noted a pronounced increase in the number of Khmers who are fluent and literate in Vietnamese. This smacks of assimilation but Khmers have embraced secular education by reference to their own idiomatic vision of the civilising process as a Buddhist project. They have done this by bringing secular subjects into monastic curricula, as well as by deploying monastic formats such as ordination, residence in urban temples, and conducting the alms round and chanting ceremonies in order to earn merit for their parents and mitigate the costs of attending state schools. For those Khmers who come from multilingual intercultural rural contexts, to supplement their education by learning a new language, Vietnamese, is not necessarily indicative of a loss of their identity but could be seen as consistent with a Khmer cosmopolitan religious tradition. An illustration of the importance Khmers attach to modernity as a source of prestige is the way residents of different localities often vie with each other as to whose way of life is more modern. The exemplary modernity of the Khmer-named province of Preah Trapeang is manifested in its emphasis on literacy, book learning, Buddhist purity and ritual austerity. By contrast Khleang Province embodies a more cosmopolitan and urbane form of Khmer modernity that is multilingual and open to multiple cultural currents. Kramuon Sor is where Khmer people’s facility in Vietnamese is better than in other regions. Intriguingly, residents of all these low-lying coastal areas tend to consider the highlands along the Cambodian border to be home to an original pristine form of Khmer culture unscathed by contemporary currents. Cambodia itself, referred to as Kampuchea Leu, or upper Cambodia, also is a place where traditional Khmer culture flourishes strongly. However, these upland regions are also said to be a haven for allegedly pre-Buddhist and pre-modern practices such as magic, sorcery, tattooing and the use

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of amulets and holy water instead of scientific modern medicine. In this formulation, which equates height with traditional integrity, but also with backwardness, Khmers of the low-lying coastal regions have inverted the implicit low status associated with belonging to Kampuchea Krom, or lower Cambodia, by equating their low elevation with prestigious forms of Khmer modernity. This depiction of the mountainous regions as pristine and original brings into view a common conception that Khmers have thrived best in regions that are remote and insular. In actuality this depiction is far from being accurate in the mountains that define the western limits of Kampuchea Krom. In these high lands along the Vietnam–Cambodia border, Khmer residents have experienced with particular intensity the impact of modern wars, competition between nation-building projects, refugee flows, forced abductions, enclosures and environmentally destructive resource extraction. In a manner that seems not co-incidental, the legends told by Khmers in these localities about their ancient past are replete with accounts of the abduction of people, the rending of bodies by wild animals and humans, and of war, refugee flight, and the theft of resources. Yet the Khmer residents of these upland regions also have derived benefits from their dealings with outsiders from beyond their localities. In particular, they take part in robust cultural religious, kin and trade exchanges with Khmer settlements across the border. Ironically, it is this intensity of their modern exchanges with Cambodia which accounts for the oft-noted authentic or traditional Khmerness of these mountainous localities, rather than their insularity or remoteness from the currents of modern history. Notwithstanding their pretensions to embody an evolved form of the Khmer tradition characterised by Buddhist civility, Khmers throughout this region also espouse faith in a range of nominally non-Buddhist agents as a source of available power. Ubiquitous neak ta, powerful locality spirits, are supplicated to avert disease, bring rain and are credited with predicting the future and deflecting floods and storms. The spirits of hermits whose bodies perished during meditation quests are all around, visible to those with karmic affinity, and acting to protect Khmer people from harm. Also roaming the earth discretely are magically invulnerable strongmen who emerge to defend Khmer people in times of adversity. Infesting the swamps, rivers and flooded lowlands are a legion of troublemaking ghosts who can be so disruptive that they can sink a passing



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ship or force a monastic community to relocate. Skilled sorcerers can manipulate these ghosts to attack their enemies and they can be mobilised into vast armies in order to protect the Khmer people from their collective enemies. Consistent with this view, nature too is venerated as a source of power. Folklore has it that animals created the land upon which humans live and the roads they travel along. The waterways too, including canals, which many Khmers consider to be natural watercourses, were created by the passages of wild animals, who roamed the forest long before the arrival of humans. Animals constantly leave their abode in the oceans, rivers and forests and enter the human realm where they couple with humans, attempt to ordain, or pilfer agricultural produce. Khmer coastal dwellers venerate dugongs and dolphins as protectors, able to avert storms and protect sailors from drowning. Crocodiles offer lessons to river-going monks and enter and are enshrined in riverside temples. Parents induct the earth goddess as a powerful enforcer in the moral education of their children. A single magical tree, planted upside down by a Khmer culture hero in the province of Preah Trapeang, still lives, and while it still lives it is believed that Kampuchea Krom itself will endure. The forests are seen by Khmers in this region as the ultimate source of power and protection. One of the key figures of the Khmer mythological tradition is the ta eisey, or hermit, who left the social world to meditate alone in the forested mountain slopes. These quests are conceptualised as dangerous ordeals with a high attrition rate. Those unworthy souls who trespassed into the forests could be greeted retributively with death, disease or madness or be eaten alive by wild animals. By surviving these dangerous sojourns, hermits were able to obtain power, knowledge and magical fighting skills and repatriate it to the human world. Much of the knowledge, techniques and doctrines that underpinned the Khmer empire are thought to have originated from these forest sojourns. Several celebrated historical defenders of Kampuchea Krom, along with a large number of abbots, meditation masters and magicians of more recent times, are said to have gained their power and knowledge in this way. A contemporary iteration of these quests to tap the power of the forest are the journeys of Khmer youths who travel from the Mekong Delta to the cities and industrial sites of the northeast uplands, a region they refer to as Prey Nokor. This name is replete with the contradictory connotations of being both forested area, or

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prey, and also nokor, meaning town, metropole, or classical centre of power. In key ways the designation given to this modern migratory destination correlates with the conception of the mountains as both forested wilderness and source of power. In leaving behind the familiar world of Khmer rural settlements and migrating to uncertain prospects in the factories and schools of Prey Nokor, Khmer youths can be seen as the modern version of the ta eisey who derived power and knowledge from surviving dangerous forest sojourns. Whether their long sojourns in this Vietnamese-dominated urban environment will bring about the destruction of their Khmer identity, or yield new sources of power and new models for being Khmer Krom is a question whose answer remains uncertain.

Kampuchea Krom as a Source of Civilisation Kampuchea Krom is frequently conceptualised as a region where Khmer royal sovereignty has been superseded, by Buddhism, or by Vietnamese secular power. Tales told by its Khmer residents depict a landscape littered with the debris of Khmer imperial power. Outposts where the Khmer king once resided or dispensed justice when touring his kingdom have long since sunken into the earth. Routes along which the Khmer king once travelled when fighting the enemy are conceptualised as tunnels that run beneath the earth. An armada of sunken royal boats and naval vessels lies entombed beneath the waters and the earth. The precious items of cargo from these shipwrecked royal craft were dispersed by currents to a variety of locations where they too were swallowed by the earth. These stories of submergence offer vivid metaphors for Kampuchea Krom as that former part of the Khmer kingdom that now lies under Vietnamese control. The era of Khmer royal authority in this region is over and memories of that era also have been submerged beneath new conceptions of the land as the inalienable territory of the 4,000-year Vietnamese nation. However, regular startling occurrences suggest that Khmer royal power has never really been eclipsed. Attempts by engineers to build bridges and roads over the subterranean tunnels used by a Khmer king invariably fail, their foundations sinking into the earth. Shipwrecked royal vessels and debris continue to police morality in the localities where they foundered, and punish with entombment passing



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vehicles, vessels and treasure hunters that do not show proper deference. Occasionally, these royal vestiges surface to reveal their presence before again subsiding. This phenomenon suggests a conception of history as tidal. Periodically, the symbols of Khmer royal sovereignty may subside from view and the waterways and roads become the site of frenetic Chinese and Vietnamese-dominated commerce. Inexorably, these instruments of Khmer royal power re-emerge from the earth and water to full view and assert an authority over those who pass through this region that is no less potent than in the ancient past when the Khmer empire was at its height. These investitures of the local environment with the hallmarks of Khmer sovereignty challenge the Vietnamese notion of southern Vietnam as a new land. According to this seemingly Viet-centric historical fiction, the Mekong Delta was a deserted wilderness when first settled by pioneer migrants from central Vietnam. This narrative is consistently challenged by local Khmers, who refer to the founding dates of their temples, which often precede the Vietnamese arrival in their region by hundreds of years. The proofs given for Khmer longevity also include the prevalence of Khmer toponyms, ancient relics, inscriptions, and the age and size of trees in their temples and settlements. The age of the land upon which Khmer people live, said to be higher and thus older than areas settled by Vietnamese, is frequently advanced as proof of Khmer precedence and ancient tenure. Nevertheless, also central to Khmer depictions of their cultural longevity and continuity in this region are the contrasts they draw between the sphere of culture and areas of low-lying wilderness that are populated by unruly ghosts, animals and cultural others. Conceived stratigraphically, Kampuchea Krom is a higher human realm, where Buddhist civility prevails. Below lies another realm in which those who did evil in a past life now reside. It is precisely to such areas that Vietnamese people first arrived, joining the animals and ghosts in the nether regions of the Khmer social world. Hence Khmer conceptions of Kampuchea Krom as an ancient and enduring cultural formation are not fundamentally shaken by the stateendorsed Viet-centric conceit that sees southern Vietnam as a new land and as a wilderness. In fact in the Khmer version this designation applies only to the parts of the region where Vietnamese people reside. These places continue to be regarded as new, wild and low, and they continue to remain outside of the Khmer cultural sphere.

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The findings of this study have implications for the melting pot model of southern Vietnam advanced by Vietnamese cultural historians. This is a place where people supposedly embrace the new, leave their past behind and embody an identity that is hybrid and constantly mutating. By contrast, Khmers frequently emphasise their cultural purity and fidelity to traditions. In the view of many Khmer monks and educated people, the hybridity lauded by southern Vietnamese writers as the regional essence is accurate only with respect to the identity of the Viets, who are said to be rootless, derivative and lacking a religious and cultural essence of their own. In a sense this view of Khmer purity and maintenance has been shaped collaboratively in combination with French and Vietnamese state officials, who have constructed their own projects in this region as culturally transformative civilising quests. Their failure to elicit Khmer participation in their projects has led to charges that the Khmers are immune to change, conservative or intransigent. However, I would suggest that the persistence of these dichotomies tells more about the non-inclusive nature of state-endorsed narratives of regional history than it does about the alleged purity or cultural conservatism of the Khmers. As this survey has shown, many Khmers celebrate or are nonchalant about their cosmopolitan identity, while some chide their ethnic consociates for their insularity or lack of openness. Yet it is clear that the notion of the region as a melting pot is far from universally embraced and that much cultural effort is expended on denying the existence of this unappealing scenario or on preventing it from ever taking place. One telling illustration of this are the many descendants of unions between migrants from southern China and local Khmers who, although they have Chinese family names, have tended to embrace Khmer cultural identity, religious practices, and language at the expense of the Chinese aspects of their heritage, and strive to be recognised by their peers as Khmers. Such people are among the most insistent exponents of the view that Khmers of the Mekong Delta are autochthonous and embody an ancient, pure and threatened identity. Another example are those self-identifying Khmers who liberally use Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham or Malay language terms in their speech, insisting that these terms are Khmer. Such practices demonstrate the assimilatory nature of Khmer identity in this region and the attractiveness to many people of the notion that this hybrid culture is in fact pure.



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Many Viet-identifying locals are not satisfied by the politically convenient notion advanced by state-affiliated scholars that everyone in this region is a newcomer who has left their past behind them. Some subscribe to the notion that their origins lie in the north which represents the ancient crucible of the Vietnamese tradition. Others look closer to home for a source that is pure and untainted. Many subscribe to the idea that Khmers embody a pure and undiluted version of Buddhism that is less contaminated by historical accretions and less Chinese than the Buddhist traditions followed by most Vietnamese. Using Khmer religious practice as a conscious model, these Vietnamese have embraced Theravada Buddhism, which is seen as a true and hence more potent Buddhism, unchanged since the time that the Buddha promulgated the faith. Through Theravada Buddhism they manifest a desire to embody an unbroken connection to the ancient past, whose most authentic local exponents are believed to be the Khmer. The most assertive disavowal of the thesis that the origins of the southern Vietnamese lie in the north is the contention made by many monks that Khmers have not been displaced by Vietnamese at all. According to this perspective, Khmers remain the majority ethnic group in the region they refer to as Kampuchea Krom. The most ambitious claim is that there are as many Khmers in Vietnam as there are in Cambodia (present population 15 million). Khmers have not been displaced by anyone or gone anywhere else. Rather they have remained in place, although many have lost touch with their cultural roots. The practice of neak ta worship, the high profile of Buddhism, the patronage of Khmer sorcerers and the place names in the region, many of which are instantly recognisable as Khmer, all attest to the Khmer origins of the people who call themselves southern Vietnamese. Misrule by state authorities, and the pursuit by ordinary people of economic rather than cultural gain has led to a deterioration in Khmer cultural capacities and a waning in people’s awareness that they are in fact of Khmer origin. All this can be rectified, however, and hundreds of Khmer monks are in the process of attempting to rehabilitate the Khmer character of this region and reconnect its residents with their true cultural roots. For many who identify as Vietnamese, the notion that they may be Khmers is an alarming idea, contravening the cherished notion that their roots lie in the north. However in a variety of ways they already are. When their bodies are sick, one of the most reliable

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forms of healing is to consume local herbal remedies, the most potent ingredients for which are collected by Khmer people. Some sicknesses are caused when one’s soul is dislodged from one’s body by a malevolent spirit of unknown origin; often it is suspected that a specially trained spirit has been driven into their bodies by a Khmer sorcerer. It is to Khmer monks that people turn to drive the spirit out of their body. In some localities people who are having trouble raising their children reassign parentage of their children to a black Khmer Buddha image. To obtain success in business, love, fertility, education and migration a great many people travel to shrines on the border with Cambodia to seek the blessing of goddesses whom many believe to be Khmer. For these people, bodily and spiritual wellbeing, along with parentage and patronage of economic and social life, flow from Khmer sources. All that is left is for their minds to grasp the reality. Noting these developments, Khmers throughout the region elaborate on the debt that the entire nation of Vietnam owes to Kampuchea Krom. In the saltwater river region it is told that the Vietnamese people themselves were created by a lonely Khmer girl who fashioned the first Vietnamese person out of shining bubbles floating along on the river’s surface. In the mountains of the west, it is Yeay Mao, the black grandmother, to whom merchants from Vietnam’s wealthiest and economically most dynamic region come each year for permission to conduct business or international affairs. From Kampuchea Krom, the waters and lands between the Mekong River and the sea, have come many of Vietnam’s most important political leaders of recent times, who led the country to prosperity after centuries of decline and war. Far from being a divisive or secessionist notion, the idea of Kampuchea Krom defines a region that many of its Khmer residents consider to be the birthplace of Vietnam. Similarly many Khmer residents of Kampuchea Krom conceive of their region as the cradle of modern Cambodia. In the late 1930s, Prince Sihanouk, the future king and father of the nation, travelled to Prey Nokor to complete his secondary education, anticipating the journeys of thousands of Khmer Krom youths from the Mekong Delta who come each year to the forest capital to study and work. Intellectuals from Kampuchea Krom founded Cambodia’s earliest newspapers, instigated the Khmer nationalist movement, and contributed to modern Cambodia’s political life and its literary, artistic



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and musical development. Monks from Kampuchea Krom have contributed to Cambodian Buddhism, gathering and researching its ancient palm leaf texts, studying and teaching in Cambodia’s Buddhist universities and serving as abbots and teachers in its monasteries. Contradicting a common Cambodian view of Kampuchea Krom as a place where Khmer culture has been diluted or lost, Khmer Krom accounts of these developments construe their region as the source from which modern Khmer culture flows. Khmers of this region entertain conceptions of origins and belonging that are far more expansive than the narrowly conceived national entities of Vietnam and Cambodia. Many Khmers consider these two countries to be recent creations that issued from the break up of the vast and ancient Khmer empire, of which Kampuchea Krom too was an integral part. The cultural affinities between the modern countries of Southeast Asia are understood by Khmer Krom people as a legacy left to posterity by this culturally brilliant ancestral kingdom. In an even more expansive conception of belonging, they envisage their homeland and the countries of their region as having been part of Suvannaphum, a transoceanic archipelago stretching from India to China and coterminous with the spread of Buddhism. Also as descendants of the ancient maritime polity of Funan or Oc Eo, they have a compelling conception of their region as a historical centre of global trading routes and exchanges. Tracing the origin stories told by Khmers of this region we can gain a sense of the deep pride Khmer Krom people have in their roots and of the importance of their region in history. We obtain a sense of the many influences that have constituted Khmer culture in this region, the multiple engagements out of which it emerged, and the connections which have sustained it. We also gain a new sense of what it means to be Buddhist, Khmer, Vietnamese and Southeast Asian through understanding how these identities have been recast by the Khmer people who inhabit the mountains, rivers and coasts at the southeast fringe of continental Asia. By exploring how these men and women have made sense of living in this environmentally unique region, we gain insights into the local wellsprings of an extraordinarily dynamic cosmological tradition, and of the importance of the mythic imagination in making a place for oneself in nature and in history.

Notes Introduction 1. Vietnam’s population census of 2009 counted 1,260,640 people officially classified as ethnic Khmers (GSO 2010). 2. Low elevation also features in an early French term for this region, Basse-Cochinchine (Low Cochinchina). 3. For studies that describe the historical waterborne residence and mobility patterns of the Chinese, Chams and Vietnamese of the lower Mekong delta, see Gerard (1968), Brocheux (1995), Cooke and Li (2003), Taylor (2007b), and Engelbert (2007). Based on excavated evidence, a Viet namese historian concluded that the inhabitants of ancient Funan had a predilection to live in a water world: with houses on stilts, markets on rivers, towns along riverbanks and an open outlook toward the sea, similar to contemporary residents of the region (Luong Ninh 1999: 30). 4. Delvert tendered that the majority of Cambodia’s rural population lives in non-inundated terrain (terres exondees) (1994 [1961]: 183). 5. Notwithstanding his remark about the Khmer fear of water, Delvert demonstrates that Cambodia’s population historically has been at its most concentrated in low lying areas surrounding the great lake and around the branches of the Mekong River, which seasonally flood in places to depths of up to eight metres (Delvert 1994 [1961]: 701–4). This too is the part of Cambodia where ethnic Khmers are concentrated, the annual inundation permitting higher than average production of rice and fish. Delvert notes that in such inundated areas houses were built primarily on several varieties of high land: the naturally elevated banks of the major rivers, the banks of now-defunct river channels, ancient man-made dykes, and small mounds of earth built up as house platforms (Delvert 1994 [1961]: 184). The demographic concentration of Khmers in heavily flood-prone regions of Southeastern Cambodia suggests that mastering the challenges of living in an inundated environ ment must be included among the most significant of Khmer ecological achievements. 6. Vietnamese ethnologists are among the sole exceptions to this consensus, providing brief sketches of the riverside habitats of Khmers in the delta (e.g. Phan An 1987: 49; Dinh Van Lien: 1991: 86–8). 272



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7. Writing of western Cochinchina, Pierre Gourou noted: “One of the most serious problems presented in the exploitation of this new, lowlying land is the provision of fresh water; in the dry season the in habitants, who have available neither springs, wells, nor stream water— for wells and streams are salty—are threatened with death by thirst” (Gourou 1940: 65). 8. Trinh Hoai Duc noted that the trade in fresh water occurred for six months each year during the dry season. The water-borne traders ex changed their fresh water for rice (1863 [1820]: 94–5). 9. Khmers living along these rivers recall that the waterborne transport and sale of fresh water almost exclusively was in the hands of people they describe as Vietnamese. In Soc Trang this trade continued into the early 1980s. 10. Various studies note that the labour intensive and remunerative chamkar market gardens that line the banks of the Mekong and Bassac rivers were developed and owned by the Chinese. The rubber plantations of the eastern highlands were foreign-owned and staffed by Vietnamese labour. The Vietnamese monopolised freshwater fishing, the Cham coastal fishing and trade. Until the postcolonial period, ethnic Chinese dominated trade and credit. Vietnamese and Chinese filled most urban professions (Delvert 1994 [1961]; Chandler 2008; Mabbett and Chandler 1995; Slocomb 2010). 11. The economic development of the western Mekong delta was described as a “Franco-Annamite collaboration”, whereas rubber production in the uplands of Cochinchina was associated with immigrants from Tonkin (Sarrault 1930). 12. Speaking of the French period one writer remarked: “The Cambodians’ passivity in the face of the Annamite infiltration is very often noted. Rather than struggle against the persistent invader, he prefers to leave home and move away” (Robequain 1944: 48). 13. One example of this view, which also draws attention to the influence of inter-ethnic exchanges on Khmer material culture, is found in the study by Phan Thi Yen Tuyet (1993). 14. For instance, one warned: “As a focal point the temple tends to embrace everything. As needs [for progress] become more complex and extensive, they go beyond the scope of each temple, and of Buddhism. Unless this contradiction is resolved it will be used by reactionary elements to cause instability” (Thach Voi 1987: 64). 15. The hypotheses aired in this and the preceding paragraph are culled from the findings of a study on the Cham Muslims of the Mekong delta, for whom mosques serve a variety of important roles (Taylor 2007b). Here I aim to explore whether similar processes might be true for Khmer Theravada temples in this same region.

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16. According to local Khmer monks, Wat Sambua in the district of Cau Ke (or Kompong Spien), Tra Vinh Province, was first founded in 373 CE, although not as a Buddhist temple. 17. The Vietnamese exponents of this mythology include Doan Gioi (1957), Son Nam (1973), Huynh Ngoc Trang (1981), and Le Ba Thao (1997). It has influenced the work of foreign scholars, including Hickey (1964), Rambo (1973), Li (1998) and Taylor (1998). 18. More examples are found in the volume by Nguyen Kim Hanh et al. (1988). 19. Scholars who discuss the displacement and assimilation of Khmers in the Mekong delta and Khmer responses in different periods include Aymonier (1900), Barrault (1927), Gourou (1940), Malleret (1946), Chandler (1996; 2008), Brocheux (1995), Choi (2004), Taylor (2004a, 2013), and Biggs (2010). Reports on these themes by indigenous rights and human rights activists include Khmers Kampuchea Krom Federation (2008) and Human Rights Watch (2009). 20. For more on this range of depictions of the Khmers in Vietnam, see Taylor (2004a, 2007a, 2011). With regards to other minority groups in Vietnam see Salemink (2003), McElwee (2004) and Taylor (2007b, 2011). 21. The elements of this tableau have been drawn from works by PoreeMaspero (1962), Delvert (1994 [1961]), Ebihara (1968), Chandler (1972), Mabbett and Chandler (1995), Chandler (2008) and Pillot (2007).

Chapter 1 1. Some districts within this arc have in excess of 400 people per square kilometre [Viet Nam Administrative Atlas (2003), p. 65]. 2. The locality’s cultural pre-eminence is not unqualified. Khmers elsewhere in the region sometimes express ambivalence about their counterparts’ characteristic bluntness; their high visibility in the Khmer ethno nationalist politics of both Vietnam and Cambodia; and their incom prehensible local dialect, which some attribute to royal heritage. 3. The most westerly of these ancient dunes lies in Tam Binh District of Vinh Long Province. The reason ancient beach dunes are not found any further inland appears to be that when the Mekong delta was younger, the alluvium deposited along its seaward front was sheltered from oceanic currents. Several thousand years ago, alluvium deposited at the delta’s ever-expanding fringe became more exposed to oceanic waves and currents resulting in the creation of long dune formations (Ta et al. 2002).



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4. In Cambodia, where these naturally elevated landforms do not exist, the term phno generally is used only in reference to grave mounds. 5. Approximately 135 Khmer villages in Tra Vinh (around 95% of the provincial total) and 3 in Vinh Long are in areas of high sandy soil. As one moves west through Cau Ke District and into Vinh Long, a dif ferent pattern of settlement, based around freshwater rivers and alluvial soils, starts to become apparent. 6. The term phum commonly is used to refer to a circumscribed neigh bourhood comprised of houses of kinsfolk. It sometimes is also used as the term for larger or more dispersed residential formations such as hamlet or village. The term srok frequently is used for wat -based villages. 7. The name of the temple in Phno Rang hamlet, Wat Sako Kiri Koh Koi, meaning Ocean Mountain Island Temple, most elegantly condenses the local Khmer sense of place. 8. Veal thiep chien phno ; dei phno kupuah chien veal. 9. Abbot, Wat Knong Srok, 2005. 10. The abbot elaborated: “Wind is nature’s force. It drives water through the air, pushes water along rivers, and drives the blood through your veins.” 11. Anderson 1978. For a description of the dynamics of freshwater reten tion and exploitation in coastal dune formations, see Fuller 1975. 12. Some six temples in close proximity to Wat Ang are linked to the legend of this king. 13. The Cambodian chronicles record in 1602, and again in the early 1690s, the re-appointment of governors to this locality (and to the provinces of Bassac and Kramoun Sor) by the Khmer court. See Mak Phoeun’s 1995 study of this period, pp. 110, 395. 14. He said the shrine to Neak Ta Kabaal ben tieal was destroyed by the new government in 1975. The neak ta is still worshipped, but elsewhere. The site of the old shrine is at the point where the road forks, opposite the district state school. The District People’s Committee offices are now located where the neak ta shrine once stood. This description sug gests that the new administration has been assimilated into a Khmer conceptualisation of local power, becoming the new neak ta. 15. In addition, the spirits of numerous ta eisey are present and continue to protect the Khmer people of this region. 16. Trinh Hoai Duc, Gia Dinh Thanh Thong Chi, P. 82 Bk 1. 17. For a depiction of this process in the central Mekong delta, see Taylor (2013: 35–9). 18. Ten years ago I documented the process of Khmer people in Tra Vinh selling farmland to acquit debts contracted in commercial farming (Taylor 2004a). The process has continued unabated.

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19. The site is located in Luu Nghiep An Commune. Public information provided at the site dates the construction of this rectangular [approxi mately 20  ×  7 metre] structure of tightly fitted red brick to the first century CE, with another stage of construction undertaken in the fifth century.

Chapter 2 1. The city of Soc Trang, or Khleang, with several important wats and longstanding Khmer communities is situated on a long dune system at the point where the dune system bifurcates. The section of National Highway One that connects Soc Trang and Bac Lieu, runs for some 12 kilometres atop a long sandy dune along which Khmer settlements tightly cluster. Soc Trang airport, built by the French, used by the Japa nese, and then significantly expanded by the US military in the early 1960s, lies atop a pair of parallel phno amidst Khmer settlements that continue to use the twin dunes for residence, water collection and transport. 2. Vo Tong Xuan and Shigeo Matsui (1998). 3. This is Phno To Tung, a long dune that runs past Wat Champa and Wat Peng Somrach, in Kompong Thom (My Tu) District, just west of Soc Trang City. In the northern half of the coastal complex, dunes ex tend more than 30 kilometres further inland. 4. For a graphic illustration of the distribution of salt marshes in the west ern delta, see Nguyen Huu Chiem (1995). 5. Daem Nhua (Noni tree or beach mulberry) has bitter and pungent fruit that is used in medicines and fermented to make alcohol. 6. According to estimates provided by local residents, at least five of the Khmer villages that fringe the coastline of Soc Trang and Bac Lieu provinces have been in situ for more than 300 years. 7. According to the 80-year-old abbot of Wat Prek Ondok, Thanh Phu:



In my youth, the water in this river was salty. This is just ten kilometres from the sea and the salt water comes up the Prek Umpu Year [Nhu Gia] river from Vinh Chau. When I was young, people would go up to Beng Coc to collect fresh drinking water to bring home. Some would travel by boat, taking along jars or drums for carrying water. Others would travel up the road by ox cart. They would pick up the water from people who had brought it downstream from around Phung Hiep where canals had already been dug and the water was fresh year round. The boats for carrying drinking water were called tuuk noam tuk.

8. This village is west of Soc Trang in My Tu [Kompong Thom] District. 9. People in Ta Ang told me that the last big flood was around 1950, during a very severe storm, when the water rose to a height of about



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two metres. The water was so high that cows were floating and grazing at the leaves of bamboo plants as they drifted by. 10. The mangrove apple is found along the banks of coastal rivers, estuaries and islands in the delta. It grows in soft mud where the water is not too salty. It can grow over ten metres tall. Its wood is hard and is used for boat building and firewood. Its hollow cone-shaped root spikes are used as fishing net floats. Its fruit, which can be up to four centimetres in diameter and contain numerous white seeds, is eaten. Its leaves are used for medicinal purposes (Ng and Sivasothi 1999). 11. The wood of the daem sangke is used for incense stick production and cremations. 12. Tonsa trees used to grow in great numbers in the vicinity of this wat. The tree has long leaves like a coconut and small edible fruit. 13. According to locals these temples were founded in 1965, 1706 and 1973 respectively. 14. Called Kinh Bang Long in Vietnamese, the Khmers who live along it refer to it as three rivers: Peam Buon, Prek Chas and Prek Tuk Sap. On the other side of Soc Trang City, near Wat Tum Nup, this same canal is called Prek Canh Tchaa or Prek Salang (barge river), after a barge that sank in it during the French era. 15. The exceptions are approximately ten Khmer settlements along small tidal rivers that debouch north into the Bassac River in Ke Sach and Long Phu districts of Soc Trang. Nonetheless, the headwaters of these rivers interlace with the tributaries of the main local river system and, for nearly 100 years, all have been connected by canal networks. 16. For details, see Nola Cooke and Li Tana (2004). 17. The phno is lined with thickets of bamboo. Locals told me that in the past, every household along this phno used to weave bamboo baskets, can cheu, as their occupation. 18. Some say the urn that floated ashore on this phno was the spittoon dropped by the Queen downstream in Peam Tho. 19. The base of the palm frond, which sprouts from the submerged mud banks of tidal creeks, is called neang chan’s thigh ( plou neang). 20. Some said it is more like a clam (lia) or mussel (krum), whose size and shape approximate a human fingernail. Her toenails (kro chot cheurn) also transformed into kro chot neang chan. 21. Some described these as a local variety of bullfrog, with a penetrating call, that is highly active in the evenings at the height of the rainy season. Others described them as tree frogs. 22. Vietnamese: Cay Gua. The hanging root strands are elements in an elaborate root network that have enabled this tree to colonise riverbanks. 23. One common explanation for sala ten is that they are what laypeople in a locality build before they have the resources to build their own wat.

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The next step is to build a wat at that site. Meanwhile, one invites the monks from a nearby wat to chant at the sala ten. 24. Another good example is Wat Bei Chhau, with seven phum, the furthest more than seven kilometres from the main temple. Each phum main tains its own neighbourhood hall within the grounds of the wat, as well as another in the neighbourhood itself. 25. Similar dynamics occurred in Chrui Nhua. During the Vietnam War, the estuary and wide swampy plain to the west of this coastal isthmus was controlled by the communist-aligned guerrillas. The Saigon army bombarded the area continuously. It was impossible to live there so Khmer residents fled to the high ground by the coast. This is one reason why there are so many temples in Chrui Nhua. 26. Formerly the boat races were held on Prek Umpu Year [Nhu Gia River] in My Xuyen District. The racing site was beside Wat Umpu Year. 27. In the version of the tale cited by Poree-Maspero, Neang Chanh/Dame Čă`nt was a remarkable cook who worked for the king before falling out of favour with him. Realising only after her death that she may have been innocent after all, the king prescribed that offerings of new rice (ambok) be made in her honour at the full moon following each rainy season retreat. He also initiated the longboat races at the site of her passing (1964: 368). 28. It is one of two festivals in her honour that follow the river’s cycles. A second is staged half a year later, in mid-April, coinciding with the height of the dry season and the nadir of freshwater levels in the river system. Salt water courses up the tributaries, making their water un drinkable and contaminating drinking ponds by their banks. At that time, monks from temples throughout the river basin descend to the tomb by the river’s mouth to mark the death anniversary of Neang Chan and to chant sutras that ensure a good rebirth. 29. Khmer road builders from Vinh Chau told me: “All men between 18 and 50 years old were required to contribute labour. We presented our selves in groups for a period of time to do the digging. Unmarried women above 18 were conscripted to cook and provide water. Huts were set up from place to place for them to do this. We had to provide our own food. It was not supplied.” 30. Opeachea Duong Nhon, Wat Prek Ondok, 2010. 31. By 2010, the trade school had already sent three classes of its graduates abroad for work. 32. Opeachea Duong Nhon told me he was among the Khmer monks and cadres who requested the party to open the Pali school. Previously, he told me, if one wanted to study in Khmer to a higher level, one had to go to Cambodia. But there were many difficulties in doing so. He served for a time as the school’s principal.



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33. The monks and abbots who complained about the noise and disruption caused by state schools in their temples told me that they are unable to get the classrooms moved out of the grounds, owing to support for this programme by powerful laymembers of the temple’s management board. 34. Soc Trang and Bac Lieu were among the most important sites in French Indochina for the development of a commercial export economy. They were sites for the emergence of enormous rice plantations owned by wealthy landlords and farmed by tenant farmers, many of whom were migrants. These developments owed much to the dredging of canals that brought in fresh water, opening up the vast brackish depressions to rice farming. Salt-pan construction and salt exports were also spurred in the French era (Brocheux 1995). 35. Traditionally a temple could hold its kathin ceremony on a date of its choosing any time during the month following the end of the vossa rainy retreat. Khmers would attend several ceremonies during this month, travelling to temples far from their home to make merit. The new regulation required all kathin ceremonies to take place on the same date, making it impossible for Khmers to continue this practice. Intri guingly, the ban struck at the heart of the confederated nature of Khmer sociality in this region. Although the protesters were dealt with harshly, their protest did result in the lifting of this restriction.

Chapter 3 1. Contemporary population concentrations in some rural districts that border the two big rivers exceed 1,000 people per square kilometre. Just ten kilometres away from the riverbank, the population density drops over fivefold. Some districts in the Plain of Reeds north of the Mekong River still have as few as 77 people per square kilometre (Vietnam Administrative Atlas 2003: 60). This concentration of settlement along the levees of the big rivers was more pronounced in the early twentieth century, before canals were dredged in back swamps to the north and south, and whose banks of dredged silt provided a new platform for residence. See Aymonier’s observations for Tien Giang in the late 1890s (Aymonier 1900: 143). 2. Told to me by a Pali teacher in Wat Polthisomrong, O Mon. 3. The abbot of Wat Veluvone showed me an entry in the Khmer dic tionary complied by Ven. Chuon Nath and published by the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh in 1968, which notes that Srok (District) Cau Ke formerly belonged to Khet Prek Russei (Bamboo River Province). 4. Each of these rivers is in excess of ten metres wide. A similar number of rivers radiates off the Mekong River channel. 5. Societe des Etudes Indo-Chinoises, Monographie de Can Tho, p. 18.

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6. According to Van Lier, their channels connect to back swamps behind the levees of the main delta distributaries that act as “natural flood regulators” when the water level rises rapidly (Van Lier, W.J. 1980). Traditional water management in the lower Mekong basin [World Archaeology 11 (3): 266]. 7. The Buu Son Ky Huong is the name of an ethnic Vietnamese mil lenarian Buddhist sect that emerged in the western Mekong delta in the nineteenth century. The Hoa Hao Buddhists, a millenarian group founded in the 1930s and with a strong presence in the central delta, trace descent to this sect (Ho Tai 1983). 8. One legend associated with this locality potentially relates to these past refugee movements. In this district (Vietnamese: Tam Binh, Khmer: Psar Thmei) is a river called Peam Bai Sor (White Rice Confluence). According to the story about this place name, Khmers who once lived beside this river were attacked by weapons-carrying Vietnamese. The residents resisted but were defeated and as they fled their homes, rice from their cooking pots was scattered onto the riverbank, colouring the riverbanks white (Khmers Kampuchea Krom Federation 2009: 75–6). 9. Peak flood levels varied considerably within this region, according to Khmer interlocutors in different localities who used the body as a measure. To this day, in Srok Setadaw (Co Do District of Can Tho Province) at the edge of the high floodplain, the water in the fields, depending on location, can come up to one’s head. However, around Wat Prek Chuok, Long My District, Vinh Long, the water in the fields never reached above the thighs. Around Wat Kandal, Tra On, in the same province, the floodwaters came just above the knee. In Srok K’sat (Ke Sach District of Soc Trang), the most easterly of these localities, the floodwaters came up to the shins, but only at high tide. The peak water levels given for the last three localities occurred in the mid-1970s. Flooding in these places diminished after that time, owing to the inten sive digging of irrigation canals, a state public works initiative in which Khmer people, including monks, were required to participate. For a scientific confirmation of these observations by Khmer residents, see Wassmann et al. (2004: 97). 10. An affiliate to Wat Botumvongsay, (Cai Tac Commune, Hau Giang), born in 1940, told me that people in his locality still lived in stilt houses in his youth. The houses were of wood, the stilts were cylindrical, not square like today, and were of wide circumference. They were made of hardwood that lasted a long time and did not rot when immersed in water. Three or four different kinds of hardwood were used to make stilts. Originally, they were made from trees that grew locally but when all these were cut down, the wood for the houses was imported from the highlands. Over time, people built up the banks with silt to form



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a platform on which to build their houses. The stilt houses disappeared around 50 years ago, during the war years. 11. The water often first was drawn into pots and a block of alum was dropped in to settle the sediments. However, in some localities it was hard to get drinking water in the dry season. One resident of Setadaw told me that in the early 1980s, the smaller streams where many Khmer people lived, 20–50 metres back from the main river, ran dry. Residents of these areas had to take their wooden boats out to the main river to collect water. They scooped the water into clay jars which were ferried home in their boats. 12. Today households throughout this region use bore water pumped from the artesian reservoir. However, as Khmer families in Wat Kairon, Long My District of Hau Giang explained, this water is expensive to access and some people are concerned about pollution, so jars for capturing and storing rainwater remain in widespread use. 13. O Mon, which is the site for the Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Insti tute, was one of the first areas in Vietnam to begin growing short stemmed high-yield rice varieties, introduced in the 1960s (Yasuyuki 2001). However, the concerted switch to two crops per year came in the 1980s. Some regions now have three crops a year. 14. One locality where the alms round still is conducted by boat is Wat Mangkol Borei Tro Nhuom Saek in Vinh Long. Each day, the monks go on the alms round. Seven of them board a small wooden boat that has an outboard motor attached and is housed in a dock in front of the wat. They go to four different hamlets. The alms round takes a good hour, if nothing goes wrong, such as engine failure or running out of fuel. The boat takes the monks to different alms collection points, drops them off, then comes back to pick them up for the return to the wat. 15. In a temple in a settlement on the old Gressier Estate, known simply as Wat 9000. 16. A few localities in eastern parts of this region were also abandoned during the French War. One was Wat Aranyut, in Hau Giang. It was a Viet Minh stronghold and early in the war came under heavy attack by the French. Initially, most people remained at home trying to tide it through. But as the fighting grew more intense into 1947, residents abandoned the settlement out of fear for their lives. Only in the mid 1950s was it safe to return. 17. In 2010 just three Khmer households were left beside Wat Ampiwon on the Vam Nhon, a river reported to have been once entirely Khmersettled. No Khmer people remain in the once populous Khmer village along Rach Tra (Prek Sala) River, which is now exclusively Vietnamese. 18. Co Do (Srok Setadaw) alone has around 2,000 Khmer families, mostly refugees who fled from several riverside villages in Giong Rieng and

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Co Do districts in 1945–46. A Khmer teacher noted that most Khmer children in Co Do do not know what villages their parents came from. 19. The two Khmer temples in Can Tho City were built to serve Khmer war refugees from the surrounding countryside. Wat Munirangsay was constructed in 1947 and Wat Pitu Khosa Rangsay in 1949. Wat Botum Vongsay, built in Cai Tac in 1935, swelled with refugees from Wat Aranyut in the late 1940s. Wat Sasanak Raingsay in Vi Thanh was built in 1969. In Cau Ke new temples were built for Khmer war refugees along a secure inter-district road (Kinh Sang in 1960, O Som Pau in 1968, O Rom in 1972), although after the war many people were able to return to their home villages and temples. 20. Interacting with people in Vinh Long who initially described themselves as Viets, I discovered several had a Khmer parent or grandparent. How ever, I often have met people in this region with a Khmer appearance who emphatically say they are Vietnamese. 21. The reliquary building is beautifully decorated with glass and metal doors that are padlocked. The Buddha relic, a bone fragment reportedly no bigger than a grain of rice, came from India. After being diagnosed, the woman went on a tour of the pagodas of the Mekong delta looking for a place to bequeath it. When she arrived in Polthisomrong, she decided this was the right place. The abbot said that it was just destiny that she chose this temple. The relic was donated in 1999. She died that year just after the inauguration ceremony. 22. In 2005 Wat Botum Vongsay, in Cai Tac, still lacked an abbot so lay persons asked the abbot in nearby Wat Aranyut, to suggest someone. The present abbot was invited to come from Wat Sereymongkol in Tan My Commune, across the river Vinh Long. I met monks from Tra On and Tam Binh in other temples in Hau Giang. 23. It is called the Southern Vietnamese Khmer Buddhist Institute [Vitchear Stan Puti Sasana Khmer Vietnam Khang Thbon].

Chapter 4 1. The broad depression that covers most of the peninsula is from 50 centi metres to 1 metre above sea level (Nguyen Huu Chiem 1995: 164). 2. This river has been discussed in connection with the Khmer-settled zone of the eastern coastal complex south of the Bassac River (see Chapter 2). 3. Sophan who helped me collect and translate several of the folktales cited in this chapter is the son of a respected Pali teacher. He was raised in the temple in Kien Giang where his father taught. 4. Prek = river; sala = areca. 5. Far upstream in Loc Ninh Commune of Hong Dan District, Bac Lieu, a tale is told about a crocodile that came up to die in a neak ta shrine.



6.

7.



8.

9. 10.

11.

12.



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Later a temple was built around the crocodile skeleton and it was given the name Wat Kabal Kropeu. This tale was related by a person in Phu Dong Commune, Phuoc Long District of Bac Lieu. In a different version, valuables inside the worship hall tumbled into the cave. No one dared to go in to recover them. The people had to build a new worship hall. I heard a similar tale in Soc Trang Province, where the crocodile that poked up its head into the temple had no tail. Such stories have affinities with the well-known Buddhist tale of a naga which, upon hearing the Buddhist sutras expounded, sought to ordain as a monk. In a version popular in Kampuchea Krom, the naga disguised itself in human form and was only discovered and expelled from the Sangha when someone spotted a scaly tail sticking out from the monk’s robes. To this day when a novice ordains, he must formally attest that he is indeed a human. Gerard Hickey reports on near-identical beliefs in water ghosts (ma da) among Vietnamese in the village of Khanh Hau, in the eastern delta (Hickey 1964: 77–8). Oc Eo was a centre of the pre-Angkorian kingdom of Funan. It is remarkable that a female yoni stone of exotic black rock, reportedly declared by an archaeologist to be in excess of a thousand years old is not linked by residents of this wat to Angkor. Instead, for them it simply is a source of power. Everything about it is deemed mysterious, including its surfacing. Malleret (1946) offers further examples of “archaeological vestiges” in the Mekong delta that are recruited by locals as neak ta. Consider three Khmer settlements in the north of the peninsula with the unusual names of 7,000, 8,000 and 9,000, each with its own temple. They lie at the heart of a huge rice-growing estate that was opened up in the marshy upper reaches of the Prek Thom river system in the early twentieth century (for details, see Biggs 2010: 53–4). The estate comprised a grid of 14 large canals spaced one kilometre apart, running north to south. The settlements along these canals are named after their distance in metres from the northernmost canal. Elderly laymen on Prek Chek [Nipa Palm River], Nga Nam, 100 kilometres from the mouth of the Prek Thom, informed me that in midcentury the river ran brackish three months each year. In the 1950s, the brackish-water season in the downstream districts of Chau Thanh and Go Quao, Kien Giang lasted up to five months, according to elderly Khmer locals. The further down the peninsula one went, the longer the brackish-water season. In the 1960s, water in the river running by Wat Krobei Kleac in Thoi Binh, Ca Mau, was too salty to drink between December and May. This pattern of lengthy saline incursions was

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prevalent in most of the peninsula up until the construction of canals and dykes in the 1980s. 13. Because of the clay soils and saline incursions, the area is not ideal for cultivating fruit trees, even now that canals channel fresh water directly from the Mekong. In the middle reaches of the basin, where the water can be brackish in the dry season, shallow-root crops like pineapples and sugarcane are grown. Conditions are more favourable for fruit trees in the upper reaches of this river system, around Hau Giang. 14. The trade in honey and in rush mats was significant enough to be noted in a map of economic activities in Indochina compiled in the early twentieth century [Carte Economique De L’Indochine (Hanoi: Service Geographique 1937)]. 15. The Kohler engine was the earliest boat engine to appear and is regarded as being superior to more recent Japanese and other models. Prior to 1975, very few Khmer families had motorboats. One estimate is that there were at most two motorboats per settlement. Most people still rowed everywhere. 16. The motorboat is moored by the bank of the waterway alongside the field that needs pumping. The propeller unit, still mounted on the boat, is inserted into a long fat tube, one end of which is submerged in the flooded field. The engine is started and the water is driven up the tube and discharged into the river. When the water level subsides, the field is ploughed and levelled, the rice is sown, and then the water seeps back into the field. Usually it is necessary for farmers in adjacent fields to do their pumping simultaneously, so that water does not seep from one field to another. 17. For example, Brocheux (1995) and Biggs (2010) discuss a violent land dispute that took place in the district of Vinh Thuan in the 1920s. 18. According to a senior abbot from Ca Mau, today there are just six Khmer wats in the province. All are located along rivers. Of these, two—Wat Krobei Kleac and Wat Chrung Khmer—have 200 to 300 Khmer families affiliated to them. Yet in the early 1950s, each had around 1,000 affiliated families. Wat Krobei Kleac formerly had 40 resi dent monks. By 2010 it had but one. Three other wats in Ca Mau are supported by just 40 to 50 families. Only 15 Khmer families are affili ated to Wat Moniwongsa Bopharam in Ca Mau City. Two additional wats were totally destroyed by bombing and not a trace of them is left. Khmer residents of all these settlements fled during the US war, many to Vinh Chau and Bac Lieu (Abbot Wat Ghositaram, Bac Lieu, 2010). 19. One version relates that after the ship sank, the king killed four of his crewmen and buried them with the boat so that their spirits would stay behind to guard it.



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20. In one version of this episode, the Chinese treasure hunters were resting and eating a meal at night in the midst of their excavation. They were talking impolitely and the earth suddenly collapsed, killing them. Another has it that when the three Chinese persons reached the golden oar, they were overjoyed. The person at the bottom of the hole farted, the one in the middle laughed, while the one above cried. Right at that moment, the earth gave way and buried all three of them. 21. This is the sole instance I encountered in many tellings of this story that has the golden royal boat resurfacing. It is possible that this version conflates elements of another well-known story in this same district about a resurfacing racing longboat. 22. This last detail was provided by an elderly Khmer woman in the vicinity of the sunken boat who said it sank around 80 years ago and close to 100 people on board died. 23. This canal is in Binh Minh Hamlet, Vinh Binh Bac Commune, Vinh Thuan District of Kien Giang. The story was told to me by a monk from this district. 24. When Sophan was very young, his parents told him that this had hap pened to someone in his hamlet. A neighbour living with her elderly mother-in-law got tired of taking care of her. The mother-in-law was sick and blind. The younger woman plotted to kill her by secretly slip ping excrement into her food to kill her. No sooner had she done this than the earth swallowed her up. He said there is a story about Thorani along these lines in the Buddhist sutras. A daughter-in-law wanting to do away with her husband’s elderly parents was punished by Thorani in a similar way.

Chapter 5 1. The high floodplain is found largely within the Cambodian provinces of Takeo, Kandal and Prey Veng and the Vietnamese provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap. Within Vietnam it extends about 50 kilometres to each side of the main rivers and a similar distance downstream from the border. 2. One monk recalled another similar episode in the Reamker. Hanuman was forced by Preah Pream to build a road between India and Lanka across the sea. But Hanuman was lazy, using just one hand to construct the road, while using the other to play chess with people on the coast. Punished for this by Pream, Hanuman became angry and gathered many mountains. He tied each to a hair on his body and flew fast, aiming to destroy the earth by causing the mountains to rain down at once. But Pream saw this and fired a flaming arrow at Hanuman. It struck him on one side, making him lose balance and slow down. Where his hair

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.



9.

10.

11.

Notes to pp. 166–85

was singed, the mountains came unfast and they fell to earth, creating a mountain chain at that spot. The tale of Neang Chan is not widely known in the mountainous regions. This fragment of her story was told to me by an elderly resident of Soc Trang. The story, told by a female resident of Srok To, relates that a Khmer monk appeared, warning the Chinese man not to steal the honey from the hive. However, he went ahead and as soon as he plunged his hand inside the hive, he and the hive turned to stone. Phnom Barach is another mountain that is named after a hermit who meditated on its slopes. Locals say that floating rice was first discovered by cowherds venturing away from the mountains, who noticed that some kinds of rice growing wild in ponds kept their head above the water no matter how deep the pond. According to a farmer born in 1934 beside Phnom Kto, during its eight or nine month growing season, the floating rice plant produced many leaves which, in the second to the sixth month of the crop cycle, were harvested several times to use as cattle feed. Wat Preal, in Tinh Bien, has a well that has been in use for as long as anyone can remember. It is 30 metres deep and was dug by hand through the sand until the granite bedrock was hit. The walls were reinforced using a mixture of lime, thnaot sugar and the leaves of a tree used for purifying water. When hardened, this mixture was as strong as cement. Formerly the walls of the andon tuk in Wat Koh Andeal of An Hao village were made of thick slabs of andeal wood, a tree found in these mountains whose wood is hard and resists water for a very long time. The walls of the well in Wat Ro were made of slabs of thnaot wood. These wells are all in use to this day but their walls are now encased in prefabricated cement sleeving. One important pilgrimage shrine centres on a pre-Angkorian male stone statue that has been transformed by pilgrims into a female deity that rests beside a large Shiva lingam. For more on this pilgrimage and its significance in southern Vietnamese society, see Taylor (2004b). Wats destroyed during the war and never rebuilt include Wat Dei Krahom, Wat Kraing and Wat Veah Ta Bung. For a contemporaneous denunciation of the persecution of Khmer monks in this period, see: “ We Testify …” : Khmer Krom Buddhist Monks Tell of their Experiences: The Religious Persecution in South Vietnam (Phnom Penh: Imprimerie du Ministere de L’Information, 1963), 22 pages. A skull and bone ossuary commemorating over 3,000 local victims of the “genocidal Pol Pot clique” is found in Ba Chuc village. Vietnamese locals and visitors tend to consider the border war in ethnic terms. They



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tend to identify the victims of the Khmer Rouge exclusively as ethnic Kinh locals and frequently conflate the Khmer Rouge and local Khmers, who are suspected of having aided the Khmer Rouge during the war. 12. Some of those removed to Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge era have been unable to return. Some trickled back from various parts of the country to reside just across the border in Phnom Din and other moun tains in Takeo. 13. Contemporary rice varieties are considered less delicious and nutritious compared with the “high” and “low” rice varieties cultivated before the 1980s. The tobacco grown locally in the past is recalled as having been more fragrant and, unlike modern imported industrially produced tobacco, it did not harm your health. The variety of cassava grown today is considered inedible and is dried and sold for export. 14. The border region is also home to a number of Vietnamese refugees who fled Cambodia in the 1970s and former soldiers who undertook military service in Cambodia. Many have some familiarity with Khmer language and some appreciate living in a Khmer-settled area.

Chapter 6 1. This tale was told in 2008 by a 45-year-old female resident of Ba Trai hamlet, Binh An sub-district, Kien Giang. 2. Locals refer to these sandy ridges as dei thuol, as distinct from the term dei phno, which is used for the similar, albeit more numerous, landforms of this type along the delta’s eastern coast. Like the term dei phno in the east, dei thuol carries multiple connotations, as land that is high, sandy, above water, and populated. 3. This is not a new problem, according to elderly Khmer residents, al though it has been aggravated by population increase and other develop ments such as shrimp pond construction. 4. For instance in the settlement that rings the base of the coastal moun tain between Wat Bei Ot and Wat Bei Cha Va in Kien Luong, large communal wells are spaced approximately 500 metres apart, each able to cater to over 50 households. 5. Speaking of coastal Hon Dat in the 1980s, one resident recalled: “Fresh water sellers frequently came to my village. No one liked to use the term ‘water selling’ so it was called ‘water exchange’. These traders would sail to the islands where there were large freshwater springs. They would collect the water, ferry it back to the mainland and travel from settlement to settlement during the dry season to sell it.” 6. People living in the interior in areas not yet connected to the state water supply network go out to the roadside and buy water from households that are connected.

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7. The waterbirds found in the swamps and seasonally inundated grass lands of this region include pelicans, several species of storks and cranes, ibis, Bengal Florican, Chinese Francolin and bushlarks. A survey of birds in this wetlands region was conducted by Birdlife International (Buckton et al. 1999: 44–6). 8. According to the late abbot of the Khmer temple in Rach Soi, about ten kilometres east of Rach Gia, near Wat Chrum Yom, is an area of land where many elephants once congregated. It is called Len daumrei. Len means an area of raised ground, such as one would use to thresh rice. The area used to be wild: the land was acidic and covered in jungle. The elephants liked to gather in that place. The earth is still very hard. They were last seen some 100 years ago. The name was rendered in Vietnamese as Lang Tuong and later changed to Giuc Tuong. 9. Kiernen (2010) offers some observations on the effect of these mining operations on local heritage, but he does not address the impacts of limestone mountain mining on local Khmer communities and livelihoods.

Chapter 7 1. The floodplain of the modern delta terminates at the southern limits of Tay Ninh Province and Ho Chi Minh City (Nguyen Huu Chiem 1995). 2. Much of present-day Ho Chi Minh City is significantly higher than the Mekong delta, with some localities in excess of 20 metres above sea level. To its west, Tay Ninh Province sits on a shelf of old alluvium. 3. In some accounts, Prey Nokor retained its status as a Khmer royal capital until the end of the French colonial era. Evidence tendered to me by the Khmer Krom people who made this claim includes the Khmer royal name given to the residence of the governors of Cochin china, Norodom Palace (now the Palace of Reunification), and the fact that former King Sihanouk resided in the city in the 1930s as a student. 4. This Vietnamese phrase was coined to refer to people of Khmer heritage who in the 1950s officially were naturalised as citizens of The Republic of Viet Nam (Le Huong 1969). The achar uses it to refer to ethnic Vietnamese; he regards many of them as assimilated Khmers. 5. This pejorative term (more politely, Khmer leu) is applied to groups such as the Mon-Khmer-speaking Stieng, Ma, Churu and Mnong, who are considered by some to be indigenous to the southern Annamese Cordillera. 6. By long term I mean those who trace connections to this region that date to at least the mid-twentieth century.



Notes to pp. 226–37

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7. Estimates provided by abbots in this region and based on the author’s site visits. The estimates are conservative because the many wats in this area that reportedly were destroyed or taken over as a result of the Second and Third Indochina Wars are not included. 8. One well I inspected in Phum Chloi, Tay Ninh, is 28 metres deep and 1 metre wide, with earthen walls. In the wet season, the water lies just six or seven metres below the earth’s surface, but the well needed to be much deeper because of the dramatic lowering of the watertable in the dry season. The well was dug into sandy clay soil using a pick, a spade, and a bucket on a rope to remove the dirt. Until state supplied water became available the well was used by five households, all relatives. 9. One representative well in Phum Serey Odum, Loc Ninh, is two metres in diameter and descends to the granite layer two metres beneath the earth’s surface. It was dug by hand, an extremely difficult task. The water lies just one metre below ground level and is sweet year round. The well is shared by five households belonging to an extended family. 10. Tigers are reported to have survived in Khmer-settled areas of Binh Phuoc until the 1990s. 11. In 2008, the distribution of housing types in the Khmer village of Phum Chloi, Chau Thanh, Tay Ninh was approximately 33% wooden stilt houses; 35% daubed mud houses; 22% brick and daubed mud hybrids; 10% brick and cement houses. 12. This pattern of children living in on-the-ground houses arranged around a stilt house in which parents or grandparents live was also observed in Phum Serey Odum, Loc Ninh. 13. The owner of one of the last stilt houses to be built in Phum Serey Odum, Loc Ninh told me: “People here still live in stilt houses but now trees are very rare, so no more are being built. They were made of wood because it was plentiful. Formerly, cement houses were considered too costly by the residents of this village. Now wooden stilt houses are more expensive to build than cement houses.” His rambling stilt house with 36 hardwood pillars was built in 1990. He cut and collected the wood for the pillars from the Cambodian border and carted it home by oxcart. 14. Khmer monks in the province, the incumbent nuns of these temples, and ethnic Viet neighbours confirmed that both had been Khmer tem ples prior to 1975. 15. For instance one woman fled from Wat Kompong Chray in Tra Vinh to Saigon in 1963 because, she said, the city was safer than the country side. “The VC shelled my hamlet from their base on the river. People sheltered in the temple. But then Americans dropped bombs on the temple, killing many people.”

290

Notes to pp. 239–45

16. When doing preliminary mapping of Khmer temples in Tay Ninh, I was driven around by local ethnic Vietnamese motorcycle taxi drivers who stopped and asked locals for directions. I repeatedly was taken to Cao Dai temples and buildings from an array of other religious denomi nations, and told they were “Chua Mien” (Cambodian temples). In several instances, custodians at these institutions confirmed that they had been Khmer temples in the past. Even when the occupants assured me that the temples had never been Khmer, the drivers were not con vinced and were left with the impression that Khmers retained a virtual religious monopoly over Tay Ninh. 17. These figures (last updated July 2009) come from buddhanet, a website dedicated to Buddhism maintained by West Australia-based Buddhist scholar Binh Anson: buddhanet.net/budsas/uni/z-photos/index.htm [accessed June 2013]. 18. Monks from Tra Vinh in Wat Kiri Puparam, Dong Nai, consider the local authorities relatively enlightened. In 2008–09 they were allowed to open a Khmer language class for years 1–5 but had to close it down because no one came. According to the abbot, the laypeople live too far away and are very poor. Only two to three Khmer families live near the temple, but they do not speak Khmer. Around 60 of the families attached to this wat now live about 30 kilometres away. They also do not speak Khmer. They rarely come to the temple—at most once or twice a year for Khmer festivals such as bon donta and chol chnam thmei. 19. By contrast, Vietnamese migrants from the delta refer to this region as “Binh Duong” or “Thanh Pho”.



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Index

299

Index Abbots, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 63, 95, 105, 117, 126–7, 149, 184, 236, 241–2, 246, 250, 265, 271 Abductions during wartime, 186, 264 in legends, 29, 164, 166, 264 Achars, xiv, 35, 59, 116–7, 126, 131, 143, 145, 241, 248 Acid soil, 9, 11, 102, 112, 197, 255, 288 Acid sulphates, 102 Acidic water, 6, 9–11, 139, 173, 197, 203, 255 Agricultural intensification, 60, 91–2, 99, 153, 186, 244 Airports, 51, 207, 256, 276 Alluvial apron, 178, 168–9, 171, 173–4, 179, 182, 184, 187, 189, 194–5, 199, 202 Alluvial soil, 47, 128, 275 Alluvium, 6, 33, 102, 110, 112, 274 Alms round, ix, 17, 59, 94, 109, 110, 114–5, 146–7, 150, 196, 263, 281 by boat, 110, 115, 146–7 decline of, 121, 149, 212, 246 spirits as donors, 167, 196 Vietnamese monks as recipients, 197 Alum, 281 Amulets, 57, 99, 181, 225, 226, 231, 264

An Giang province (Moat Chrouk), 162, 178, 186, 202, 208–9, 211, 215, 285 Ancestor festival (pchum ben, bon donta), 40–1, 180–1, 246 Ancestors, xi, 41, 98, 137, 241, 244 ritual veneration of, 40–1, 143–4, 180–1, 189, 248 Angkor, 2, 10, 14, 20, 72, 105, 134, 164, 256, 283 Angkor Borei, 164, 165 Animal-human interactions, 55–6, 78, 117, 129, 130–3, 193, 227–8 Ants, 77 Apocalypse, 1, 27–8, 61, 184 Aqueducts, 187, 189 Aquifer, 10, 45, 71, 149 Arak, 167 Archaeology of Kampuchea Krom, 63, 135, 164, 195, 221, 223, 283 Areca, 106, 130, 230, 282 Army bases, 51, 108, 118, 188 Art, 2, 64, 65, 73, 241, 270–1, 282 Ashes, of deceased, 35, 72, 189 Assimilation, xii, 2, 21, 26–7, 70, 104, 129, 150, 151, 242, 249, 259, 263, 274 Aymonier, Etienne, 22, 104, 137, 164, 222, 274, 279 299

300

Index

Bac Lieu province (Plieu), 31, 37–8, 68–74, 79–80, 86, 97, 129, 132, 134, 136, 276, 279, 282, 283, 284 Backwardness attributed to Khmers, x, 3, 15, 18, 32, 66, 252, 264 Bamboo, 54, 106, 114, 138, 139, 184, 201, 277 basket ware, 74, 82 in construction, 112, 113, 138, 211, 229 in fishing, 139 water supply pipes, 174, 201 Bananas, 106, 112, 113, 119, 170, 202, 215 in offerings, 41, 132, 135 Bao Dai, 24 Barges, 277 Baria-Vung Tau, 222, 240, 243 Basalt soils, 219, 226, 233 Bassac River, 10, 31, 41, 54, 62–4, 66, 68–70, 76, 82, 92, 100, 102, 104, 105–7, 110–1, 119, 120, 124–5, 128, 162, 177, 193, 194, 258, 260, 261, 273, 277 Bats, 191 Beach mulberry (Noni tree), 71, 276 Beach ridge, 197, 198 Bees, 140, 202 Ben Tre province (Kompong Russei), 104 Bien Hoa, 222 Binh Duong province, 227, 240, 243, 247, 290 Binh Minh district, 107, 118 Binh Phuoc province, 221, 224–5, 226–7, 228, 231, 233, 235, 236, 239, 240, 241, 289 Birds, 54, 117, 140, 171 Bird-catching nets, 140 Black Buddha statues, 123–5

Boat landings, 55, 62, 77, 87, 113–4, 136, 147 Boats cargo, 79, 93, 115, 142 fishing, 71, 77, 141, 205, 215 for alms round, 110, 115, 146–7 for transporting water, 10, 140, 141, 146, 152, 276, 281, 287 in ritual offerings, 40, 41 magical, 153–61 mechanisation of, 77, 79, 113, 141, 147, 152, 176, 205, 256, 284 ocean-going, 71–3, 97, 205–7 passenger, 79, 80, 141, 142, 159, 207 races, 88, 89, 91, 147, 151, 155, 156, 160, 278 residence upon, 7, 272 rowing, 41, 77, 113, 140, 146, 147, 152 royal, 29, 153–5, 157, 161, 166, 266 sailing, 73, 79, 113, 153, 166, 207, 209 shipwrecked, 39, 76, 153–60, 166, 266 Bombing, 75, 86, 118, 121, 123, 148, 184, 210, 215, 278, 284, 289 Border (Thai–Cambodia), 32, 37, 162 Border (Vietnam–Cambodia), x, 4, 8, 11, 12, 102, 103, 111, 162–3, 219–20, 238, 258, 263, 264 exchanges and links across, xiii, 163, 177, 181–3, 188–90, 207–8, 213, 220, 225, 231–3, 235, 239, 270, 289



Index

Border war (Vietnam–Cambodia), 25, 163, 184–6, 211, 234–5, 260, 286–7 Bores, for water extraction, 10, 86, 281 Botumawong (mythical king), 49, 51 Boules (game), ix Brahmanism, 53, 56, 65, 99, 164 Buddha as magically powerful, 55, 241 footprints, 37, 221 journeys to the Mekong delta, 32, 37, 165–6, 221 relics, 126, 282 stories about, 196 teachings, 1, 27, 53, 117, 269 visions of, 117 Buddha statues as protectors, 123–5, 160, 270 attacked by animals, 131 damaged in war, 121, 122 magical powers, 29, 75–6, 122, 123, 124 miraculous appearance of, 29, 65, 75, 82, 104, 123, 124–5, 160 Buddhism among Vietnamese, 118, 150, 184, 239–41, 247–8, 250–1, 269 and cosmology, xi, 5–6, 27–8, 39–41, 61, 145, 223, 253, 262 and Khmer civility, 38–41, 55–6, 190, 219–20, 223–4, 241–2, 262–4 and Khmer Krom identity, 2, 65, 224, 258 and Khmer social organisation, 17–9, 35, 53–4, 85–8, 98, 179–80 archaeological record of, 63, 164, 222

301

as a customary practice, 98–9 critiqued, 18, 273, 98–9, 241, 248 education, see monastic education in Cambodia, 2, 17, 18, 64, 117, 232, 239–40, 271 policies towards, 18, 59 propagation of, 36–7, 53, 66, 271 Buddhist Institute (Phnom Penh), 279 Buffalo, 42, 56, 130, 140, 141, 145, 189, 202, 231 Buu Son Ky Huong (religious group), 107, 280

Ca Mau (Tuk Khmau) city, 136, 284 peninsula, 75, 89, 103, 128, 134, 137, 141, 148, 207 province, 129, 136, 148, 283, 285 Cai Lon River (Prek Thom), 128–9, 135, 140, 147–8, 152–3, 160, 283 Cambodia as a template for Khmer culture, 3, 4, 5, 17–8, 32, 37, 69, 224, 226 Buddhism in, 2, 17, 18, 64, 117, 232, 239–40, 271 ecological repertoire in, 5–7, 10–1, 14–5, 22–3 exchanges with, 18, 19, 32, 64, 143, 155, 181–3, 189–90, 196, 208, 212–3, 220, 225, 231–2, 240 former sovereignty in southern Vietnam, xi, 1, 2, 56, 105, 134–6, 222–3, 238–9

302

Khmer cultural vitality in, x, 212–3 Khmer Krom identifications with, 26, 58–9, 89, 105 Khmer Krom leaders in, 32, 64, 218 migration to and from, 21, 26, 59, 117–8, 184, 185–6, 207–8, 233, 234–5, 237, 239 physical geography, 5–8, 10, 14, 182, 207–8 religion in, 14, 18, 117, 181, 196, 232, 239–40 society, 14, 22–3, 116, 117, 143, 207–8 study in, 19, 59, 64, 87, 183, 190, 213 Can Tho province (Prek Russei), 102, 104–6, 117, 119, 126, 233, 274, 275, 279, 282 Canals, 6 dug by Khmers, 59, 185 in ancient Khmer times, 10, 164–5, 183 for drainage, 8, 79, 90, 91, 110, 148, 203 for flood control, 186, 280 for irrigation, 10, 26, 43, 71, 79, 90–1, 148, 187, 216 Khmer perceptions of, 38, 60, 78, 91–2, 98–9, 133–4, 148–9, 265 Khmer residence along, 78, 85, 137, 260, 283 naming, xi, 78, 99, 157, 277 Vietnamese residence along, 8, 16–7, 137, 148, 210 Cao Dai (religious group), 232–3, 235, 239, 290 Cardamom Mountains, 162 Carts cattle-drawn, 6, 44, 116, 182, 189, 276, 289

Index

horse-drawn, 44, 180, 182, 189 water carrying, 200, 206–7, 276 Cashews, 170, 184, 202, 230, 231, 234, 245 Casiers Tonkinois, 148 Cassava, 170, 230, 287 Catholics, 89, 148, 236–7, 238, 239 Cattle carts, 6, 44, 116, 182, 189, 276, 289 properties, 140 races, 180–1 trade, 177, 183, 190, 231 Cau Ke district (Kompong Spien), 48–9, 105–6, 117, 119, 126, 233, 274–5, 279, 282 Cau Ngang district (Phno Daek), 36, 41–2, 46–7, 50, 52 Caves, 132, 191–2, 195, 196, 197, 208, 210, 283 Cham Muslims (ethnic group), 7, 17, 23, 87, 141, 177, 268, 272, 273, 277 trading activities, 17, 23, 141, 177, 273 Chamkar orchards, 170, 182, 184, 186, 273 Champa, 134, 160 Chanting in Pali, ix, 48, 75, 94, 179, 181, 241, 247–8, 250, 263, 278 in Vietnamese, 150, 236, 241, 247–8 Charcoal production, 140, 202 Chettiars, 23 Cheuteal tree, 54, 57, 58 Chickens, 132, 166, 202 China, 1, 63, 65, 73–4, 80, 98, 164, 209, 220, 240–1, 261, 268, 271



Index

Chinese junk trade, 16, 80, 96 language fluency, 73, 87, 98, 209, 260, 261 mixed ancestry of Khmers, 63–4, 88, 137, 209–10, 268 networks in coastal areas, ix, 16, 64, 194, 209 pepper production, 202, 209 relations with Khmers, 23, 63–4, 87, 177, 178, 192, 268 religious practices, 63–4, 73, 126, 247, 268 residential locations of, ix, 7, 16, 24, 96, 137, 224, 272 traders, 23, 24, 96, 115, 137, 142, 178, 267, 273 treasure hunters, 154, 156, 159, 166, 285, 286 Chol Chnam Thmei, see New Year, Khmer Chuon Nath, 240, 279 Churu ethnic group, 288 Cities education in, 94–5, 248–51 Khmer conceptions of, 24, 28, 243–4 Khmer labour migration to, 26, 61, 149, 214, 260, 265–6 Khmer residence in, x, 120, 124, 226, 237, 244, 245–7, 248–50 refugee flight to, 118, 119, 123, 234, 237 Clams, 71 Clay daubed houses, 228, 229, 289 house platforms, 138 mining, 231 pond walls, 76, 86, 139, 174, 289

303

soils, 33, 77, 128, 137, 139, 174, 221, 284 statues, 231 water urns, 112, 116, 131, 182, 200, 276, 281 Co Do district, 112, 118, 120, 222, 280, 281–2 Coedes, 165 Cochinchina, 2, 7, 8, 10, 14, 23, 24, 25, 116, 117, 232, 272 Coconut, 50, 106, 138, 209, 215, 277 Communist party members (Khmer), xiv, 59, 64 Confederated sociality, 37, 52, 54, 76, 78–85, 88, 97, 98, 101, 175, 261, 279 Confucianism, 20, 183 Cong Binh ferry crossing, 123, 155 Conscription of Khmers, 26 Cosmology, xi–xiv, 1–2, 4–5, 9, 27–8, 32, 35–41, 66–7, 129–35, 142, 159–60, 165–8, 223–4, 253–7, 262, 271 Cosmopolitanism among Khmers, xii, 19, 69, 73–4, 209–10, 212–3, 231, 257, 260, 261, 263 Corn, 83, 170, 228, 230 Corvee labour, 59, 90, 278, 280 Cow manure, ix, 170, 187 Cows, see cattle Crabbing, 194, 206, 208 Crabs, 71, 73, 83, 139, 171, 202, 215 processing, 206, 215 Crocodiles as landscape creators, 42, 107 dangers of, 49, 134 human interactions with, 131–3, 161, 166, 265, 282–3 Cucumbers, 170

304

Index

Dance, 156, 224, 246 Debt, 60, 92, 149, 188, 214, 244, 275 Deer, 171, 195, 201 Delvert, Jean, 8, 272 Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, 185 Development policies, x, 3, 4, 25–6 French, 14–5, 59, 78, 90, 122, 137, 148, 220, 233, 256, 268, 276 post-colonial, 58–9, 184, 210, 288 post-war, 15, 16, 26, 59, 60, 90–2, 99, 148–9, 210, 211–2, 216–7, 233, 243–4 Demons, 40, 53, 155, 165 Dolphins, 72, 265 Dong Nai province, 226, 236, 237, 240, 241, 243, 290 Dong Nai River, 222 Dong Thap province, 104, 285 Dredges, 8 Drought, 9–11, 28, 81, 273 Ducks, ix, 139, 140, 202 Dugongs, 72, 83, 265 Dunes (phno), 8, 9, 33–67, 68–91, 95, 97, 106, 114, 198–202, 274–8 Dykes, 10, 26, 43, 98, 148, 186, 272, 284

Earth, origin stories, 1, 4, 130, 196 Ecological repertoire, 5, 14–9, 256 Economic liberalisation policies, 26, 60, 92–3, 96, 188, 213, 244, 260 Eels, 77, 139 Elephants as pests, 227–8 decline of, 8, 195 domesticated, 228

forming the landscape, 8, 42, 106–7, 130, 207 in legends, 155 Elephant Mountains, 162 Environmental marginality of Khmer areas, 3, 6–10 Estuaries, 12, 13, 71, 72, 78, 81–4, 90, 97, 129, 153, 207, 217, 256, 258, 277, 278 Erosion, 12, 159, 168, 169, 194, 219, 221, 226, 244 Ethnic minority boarding schools, 212, 262–3 Ethnic minorities, 3, 6, 41, 141, 225, 252, 254, 274 Ethnologists (Vietnamese), 11–2, 18, 22, 272 Ethnonationalism, 4, 118, 151, 163, 233, 239, 274 Exorcism, 247, 250

Factories, 43, 100, 179, 188, 206, 214, 215, 243–5, 260, 263, 266 Family compounds, ix, 112, 138, 169, 174, 189, 197, 228, 229 Fences, 34, 35, 174, 229 Ferries, ix, 123, 155 Fertiliser, 14, 60, 149, 187, 230 Fishing nets, ix, 42, 139, 145, 171, 206, 215 Fishing, ix, 14, 42, 71, 77, 139, 140–1, 171, 205–6, 215 Floating rice, 15, 112, 171, 182, 187, 286 Floodplain, 7–8, 13, 26, 172 Floods, 1, 7–9, 33, 74, 77, 106, 162–3, 169, 171, 180, 187, 280 Foraging and gathering, 15, 139–40, 171, 177, 189, 201–3, 208, 231, 257, 270



Index

Forests animals in, 42, 55, 106–7, 130–1, 136, 140, 167, 185, 195, 201–2, 227–8, 265 enclosures, 186, 189, 220, 234 hunting in, 140, 171, 185, 191–2, 201–2 industrial, 14, 220, 229–30, 233–4, 243 perceptions of, 8, 10, 14, 15, 54–8, 131, 153–5, 158, 177, 167–8, 223, 265–6 religious practices in, 55–7, 117, 167–8, 181, 196–7, 265–6 submerged, 128, 129, 136, 193, 210 upland, 163, 169, 172, 177, 182, 186, 192–6, 201–2, 208, 219, 227 warfare in, 25, 56–7, 148, 184–5, 210–1, 234–6 Franco–Khmer schools, 59, 116 Frangipani, 209 French colonial social conditions, 9, 23, 25, 74, 116, 137, 183–4, 210, 220, 225, 229, 232–4, 257, 263, 273 development policies, 14–5, 59, 78, 90, 122, 137, 148, 220, 233, 256, 268, 276 language, 116, 210, 234 scholars, 6–9, 14, 22, 30, 104, 221, 223, 273 war, 25, 108, 118–23, 184–5, 210, 237, 259–60, 281 Frogs, 83, 139, 176, 277 Funan, 2, 20, 38, 62, 65, 164, 194, 271, 272, 283 Fungi, 171

305

Gardens, 34, 73, 77, 112, 140, 176, 179, 184, 197, 206, 273 Garuda (krudh), 167 Geographers, 6–7, 8, 10, 14, 31, 272, 273, 284 Geographical intimacy, 13–4, 28, 29, 78, 83–4, 100, 118, 139, 176, 254 Geography, 12, 14, 16, 19, 29, 37, 50–1, 78, 97, 165, 192, 238, 261 Ghosts, 39–41, 42, 99, 108, 110, 124, 167, 196, 264–5, 267 Ghost soldiers, 57 Gia Dinh, 10 Giong Rieng district, 122, 126, 130, 132, 136, 137, 138, 153, 155, 281 Go Dau district, 236 Go Quao district (Moat Peam), 131, 132, 135, 142, 144, 147, 156, 283 Goats, 171, 185, 195, 201 Golden eel, 77 Gongs, 75, 82, 115, 156 Gourds, 170 Gourou, Pierre, 14, 273 Granite, 12, 162, 182, 286, 289 Grapefruit, 106, 112, 119 Grasses, 193, 202, 229, 231, 288 Guerrillas, 86, 121, 185, 278 Gulf of Thailand, 128–9, 134–5, 152, 192–9, 207, 209 Guns used in hunting, 140, 185

Ha Tien (Peam), 192, 195, 197, 207, 208, 211, 213, 216 Hanuman, 285–6 Hau Giang province, 89, 99, 102, 115, 117, 119, 122, 126, 129, 132, 136, 137, 148, 185, 245, 280, 281, 282, 284

306

Index

Hedges, 34, 138, 228, 229 Herbal medicine, 54, 171, 177, 182, 189, 190, 201–2, 215, 275, 276 Hermits (ta eisey), 56, 57, 135, 150, 167–8, 196, 264, 265, 266, 275 Hinduism, 20, 53, 56, 65, 99, 164 Historical perceptions Khmer, xi, xii, 13–4, 19–20, 26, 27–30, 36, 54, 57–8, 66–7, 84, 88, 99, 101, 104–11, 125, 129, 157, 160–1, 164, 223–4, 259, 261, 267, 271 Vietnamese, 3, 4, 7–8, 20–2, 103, 125, 127, 238–9, 253–4, 261, 267–8 Ho Chi Minh City (Prey Nokor, Saigon) as an economic centre, 93, 245 as ancient Khmer centre, 222–3, 270, 288 Khmer migration to, 214, 236–7, 243–5, 260, 265–6, 289 Khmer residence in, 226, 237, 245–50 Khmer temples, 222, 224, 237–8, 241, 246–51 Vietnamese colonisation, 223, 224, 253 Hoa Hao (religious group), 118, 119, 123, 184, 280 Hon Dat district, 204, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212, 287 Honey, 140, 202, 284, 286 Horse racing, 51 Horses, 44, 51, 169, 180, 182, 189 Horseshoe crabs, 206 Hunting, 15, 139, 140, 171, 191, 192, 201, 202, 218, 257

India, 20, 65, 66, 164, 271, 282, 285 Indochina Wars First, 25, 108, 118–23, 184–5, 210, 237, 259–60, 281 Second (Vietnam War), 25, 59, 86–7, 89, 104, 119–22, 148, 184–5, 210–1, 215, 284, 289 Third (With Khmer Rouge), 25, 163, 184–6, 211, 234–5, 260, 286–7 Indra, 196 Insularity, 16–7, 22, 27, 32, 37, 50–3, 64, 66, 98, 100, 163, 177, 181, 190, 224–7, 244 Inter-ethnic relations with Cham Muslims, 141, 177 with ethnic Chinese, 23, 63–4, 87, 177, 178, 192, 268 with ethnic Vietnamese, 3, 18, 19, 21, 74, 87, 93, 110, 125, 126, 148, 151, 177–8, 197, 223–4, 234–6, 238, 247, 269–70, 273, 282 with upland minorities, 221–2 Irrigation, 10, 14, 26, 46, 59, 79, 91, 137, 148, 187, 203, 227, 280

Jackfruit, 170, 171, 202 Japanese boat engines, 284 occupation, 118, 276

Kae no (half-bird, half-women), 167 Kampuchea Krom, xi, 1–2, 4, 11, 24, 27–30, 57, 62, 64, 65, 69, 105, 109, 121, 160, 162, 168, 181, 219–20, 221, 223–4, 227, 242, 252–71



Index

Kathin festival, 41, 98, 247, 279 Ke Sach district, 119, 120, 121, 277, 280 Khanh Hoa province, 239 Khmer daem (original Khmers), 219, 225–6 Khmer empire, 1, 8, 20, 56, 57, 65, 84, 105, 135, 164, 262, 265, 267, 271 Khmer identity, x, 11, 18–9, 22, 24, 26, 28, 32, 58, 70, 96, 98, 100–1, 127, 152, 181, 224–6, 249, 252, 258–68 Khmer language anxieties about loss of, 94–5, 104, 121, 212, 218, 224, 260–1 as lingua franca, 60–1, 74, 208, 209–10, 212–3, 245–6 classes in temples, 35, 54, 57, 59, 62, 94, 116, 126, 189, 242 curriculum, 57–8, 59, 94–5, 116, 263 fluency among ethnic others, 74, 98, 177, 189, 209–10, 261 lessons at state school, 59, 94 literacy, 32, 57, 96, 101, 116–7, 126, 149–50, 181, 188–9, 190, 212, 218, 224, 241, 263 materials, 59, 190, 212–3, 225, 246 place names, xi, xiii, xiv, 29, 36, 136–7, 227, 267, 269 preservation, 22, 58, 225, 233, 241–2, 262 Khmer-Mon, 65, 66 Khmer Rouge, 183, 185–6, 208, 211, 235, 237, 256, 260, 287 Khmer royal outposts in the Mekong delta, 49, 51, 105, 134, 135, 165, 222

307

Khmer Theravada Buddhist Institute, 126–7, 282 Khmien wat (temple boys), 115 Kien Giang province (Kramuon Sor), 129, 131, 134, 136, 143, 150, 153, 157, 165, 192, 211–2, 245, 282, 283, 285, 287 Kien Luong district, 194, 195, 203, 205–6, 287 Kinh ethnic group, see Viets Kirivong district (Cambodia), 182 Koki tree, 54, 105, 109, 147 Kompong Cham, 87, 232 Kong Rei (mythical demoness), 165 Lakes (beng), 6, 38, 42, 43, 51, 77, 90, 171, 209 Lakorn Bassac (musical genre), 64, 101 Landlessness, 23, 60, 92, 94, 127, 188, 214, 218, 243 Lao army, encampment, 75 Laos, 65, 226 Laterite, 72 Legumes, 170 Leprosy, 10 Le Van Giang, 239 Life-cycle rituals, xiii, 17, 53, 143, 179, 190 Limestone mountains, 12, 192–8, 207–8, 210, 216–7, 288 Literacy Chinese, 87, 261 Khmer, x, 32, 57, 96, 101, 116, 149, 181, 188, 190, 212, 218, 224–5, 260–3 Pali, 261 Vietnamese, ix, 27, 96, 218, 261, 263 Literacy classes Khmer, 36, 54, 57, 64, 121, 126, 143, 149–51, 189, 212, 242, 248, 262

308

Index

Pali, 121, 143, 150, 212, 248, 262 Vietnamese, 27 Lithophones, 221 Lizards, 166, 171 Loc Ninh, 225, 230, 282–3, 289 Local ritual hall (sala, thala, sala thien, sala ten), 85, 113, 179, 246–7, 277–8 Lon Nol, 237 Long An province, 104 Longboats (tuuk ngo), 88, 89, 91, 147, 151, 155–61, 278 Long My district, 132, 136, 280, 281 Long Phu district, 71, 73, 78, 85, 277 Long Xuyen city, 176 Lotus flowers, 38, 145, 174, 222 Ly Thong (folktale character), 191–2, 197

Ma ethnic group, 288 Mahayana Buddhism, 197, 236, 239, 248, 250 Malaria, 10 Malay language, 268 networks in Indochina, 16, 194 Malaysia, 100, 106 Malleret, Louis, 63, 221–2, 283 Mandarins, 112 Mangoes, 36, 112, 119, 130, 154, 170, 171, 184, 202 Mangrove apple, 77, 83, 277 Mangroves, 83, 140, 206 Market economy, 15, 26 Mat making, 140, 202, 284 Meditation, xiv, 1, 4, 35, 37, 53, 94, 98, 117, 168, 196, 261, 262, 264, 265 Megalithic tombs, 221

Mekong River, 1, 33, 41, 51, 104–5, 108, 162, 255, 270, 272, 279 Melaleuca (tea tree), 128, 211 Mermaids, 72–3, 83, 193 Miasmas, 10 Mice, 130 Migration of Vietnamese, 7, 8, 19, 20–2, 42, 90, 118–9, 137, 148, 151, 210, 233, 238, 273 Khmer rural–urban, 26, 61, 94–5, 149, 214, 236–7, 243–5, 248–51, 260, 265–6, 289 to and from Cambodia, 21, 26, 59, 117–8, 184, 185–6, 207–8, 233, 234–5, 237, 239 war-induced, 21, 25–6, 71, 86, 89, 104, 109, 119–27, 148, 160, 220, 234–5, 237, 245, 259–60, 280, 281, 282 Military service, 26, 59, 287 Mining, 188, 208, 210–4, 216–8, 231, 288 Modernity alleged Khmer immunity to, 16, 18, 22, 30, 177, 220 Khmer visions of, 27, 32, 98–9, 248, 251 Vietnamese visions, 15, 25–6, 246, 256 Mnong ethnic group, 288 Molluscs, 83 Mon-Khmer language family, 288 Monastic education, 32, 35, 54, 64, 87, 94, 116, 121, 126–7, 190, 242, 248–50, 262–3 Monkey bridge, 113 Monkeys, 185, 195, 208, 227 stories about, 131, 167, 208



Index

Monks, 18, 35, 40–1, 48–6, 75, 85–7, 89, 93–4, 109–10, 115–6, 121, 126–7, 146–50, 179, 181–4, 188–9, 198, 201–2, 208, 211–6, 240–2, 246, 248–51, 265, 269–71, 281, 286, 290 Monsoon, 14, 81 Motorbikes, 79, 92, 180, 182, 188, 189, 190, 207, 213, 247 Mudflats, 70, 71, 83, 206 Museums, xiv, 15, 20, 33, 38, 131, 222, 238–9 Music, ix, 64, 101, 190, 213, 224, 225, 246, 271 Mussels, 71 Myths about natural features, xi, xii, 6, 12, 28–9 My Tu district (Kompong Thom), 74–6, 160, 276 My Xuyen district (Bei Chhau, Baixau), 80, 81, 91, 94, 278

Naga, 191–3, 208, 233, 283 Nam Bo (southern Vietnam), 3, 13, 20–1 Nationalism Khmer, 2–5, 13, 24, 32, 64, 151, 163, 183, 233, 252–3, 258 Vietnamese, 3–4, 25, 118, 163, 184, 239, 252 Neak ta (local guardian spirits), 53 as crocodiles, 132, 282–3 myths about, 52, 154 origin of, 65, 283 powers of, 52–3, 74, 264 rites to, 40, 154, 269 Neang Chan (legendary queen), 72–3, 80–5, 88, 90, 99–100, 101, 166, 260–1, 277, 278, 286 rites to, 88, 278

309

Neang Chan fish, 72, 73 New Year Festival Khmer (Chol Chnam Thmei), 2, 52, 88, 112, 117, 143, 144, 155, 174, 224 Sino-Vietnamese, 154, 246 Newspapers (Khmer), 212–3, 246, 270 Nga Nam district, 145, 283 Nguyen Anh (Vietnamese king), 56 Nguyen Tan Dung, 64 Novices, 35, 283 Nung migrants in south, 234

O Mon district (O Mal), 105, 107, 111–5, 118–20, 122–7, 281 Oc Eo, 166, 271, 283 Offerings, 40–1, 52, 82, 85, 132–5, 156, 164, 179, 238, 246–7, 278 Ok Omboc festival, 143, 156 Old alluvium, 6, 12, 219, 221, 226, 288 Oral histories, 6, 15, 57, 125, 259, 260 Oranges, 112 Orchards, 14, 54, 103, 119, 120, 170, 182, 184–5, 186, 244 Ordination, 17, 41, 62, 116–7 as life cycle rite, 53 as a path of social mobility, 116–7, 143, 249, 263 decline in, 121, 149, 212 of crocodiles, 132 proactive maintenance of, 59, 62, 126

Pali chants, ix, 48, 75, 94, 179, 181, 241, 247–8, 250, 263, 278

310

Index

lessons, xiii, 51, 87, 94, 121, 126–7, 130, 143, 150, 181, 210, 212, 231, 241, 248, 262 literacy, 261 sutras, 55–6, 65, 75 Pali Supplementary Middle School, 94–5, 100, 150 Papaya, 202 Paperbark trees, 138, 139, 202 Parmentier, 222 Peam Chan (Co Co River), 71, 79, 81, 82, 84, 90, 128 Pepper, xiii, 202, 206, 208, 209, 215, 218, 230–1 Pesticide, 60, 61, 92, 112, 149, 188, 189, 244 Phan Thanh Gian Secondary School, 116 Phan Van Khai, 64 Phung Hiep, 78, 89, 276 Pigs wild, 167, 171, 185, 195, 201 domesticated, 202 Pilgrimages, 64, 124–5, 163, 176, 178, 188–90, 196, 197, 212–4, 218, 232, 257, 286 Pineapple, 284 Pirates, 17, 194 Placenames, see toponyms “Pnong” ethnic label, 235 Pol Pot, 237, 286 Polders, 26 Political representation in Vietnam, x, 20, 24, 61, 89, 151, 262, 270 Ponds (sras, andon), 10–1, 43, 45–9, 55, 68, 71, 76, 139–40, 200 contamination, 60, 92, 149, 216, 278 in temple grounds, 47–9, 85–6, 144–5, 174–5, 198

Population estimates, 2, 3, 96, 104, 109, 129, 226, 269, 272, 279 Poree-Maspero, Eveline, 81, 88, 278 Poverty, x, 3, 23–4, 28, 94, 98, 116, 144, 149, 243, 245, 249–50 Pre-Angkorian civilisation, 63, 134, 164–5, 208, 222, 283, 286 Preah Ko, Preah Keo, 166–7 Preah Vihear, 37 Precedence, 19–20, 21, 84, 133–4, 158, 161, 220, 238–9, 243, 262, 267 Prehistory, 164, 221–2 Prey Nokor (see Ho Chi Minh City) Propeller pump, 141, 284 Puthisan (mythical hero), 165

Quarries, 182, 189, 216–7, 231

Rabbits, 171 Rafts, 113 Rainfall, 7, 9–12, 68, 173, 197, 227 Rambutan, 119 Rats, 139 Reamker (Ramayana), 165, 285 Refugees, 21, 25–6, 71, 86, 89, 104, 109, 119–27, 148, 160, 220, 234–5, 237, 245, 259–60, 280, 281, 282 Vietnamese, 42, 89, 148, 223–4, 236–7, 238, 287 Republic of Vietnam, 58–9, 62, 122, 148, 184, 210, 288 Resistance bases, 118, 148, 163, 184, 185, 210 Resistance to assimilation, xii, 2, 4, 18–9, 27, 32, 59, 62, 66, 259, 262



Index

Rice floating varieties, 15, 112, 171, 182, 187, 286 milling, 23, 115 new varieties, 60, 92, 141, 148–9, 187, 203–4, 244, 257, 281, 287 terraces, 169–71, 176, 182, 187, 189 traditional varieties, 33, 42, 74, 77, 92, 112, 140, 169–70, 182, 202–4, 216, 230 Rice Research Institute (O Mon), 281 River banks flooded, 88, 102, 106, 110–1 residence along, 7–9, 39, 76, 78, 103–7, 110–3, 120, 129, 137–8, 159, 223, 272, 279 trees on, 77, 112, 113 Roads business along, 69, 96, 188, 287 development, 60, 80, 92, 141, 177, 188, 207, 216, 234, 266 settlement along, 86, 210, 260 Robequain, Charles, 233–4 Rubber, 14, 23, 87, 225, 229–30, 233–4, 237, 238, 243, 244, 257, 273 Rurality, 16, 18, 22–3, 24, 28, 67, 203, 245, 257, 263 Rushes, 38, 43, 44, 80, 140, 171

Sa Dec (Psar Dek), 105 Sacred trees, 57, 58, 109, 156, 167 Sacrifice, 57, 58, 62, 67, 157, 262 Saigon (Prey Nokor, see Ho Chi Minh City) Saigon River, 222

311

Sailors, 72, 166, 193, 194, 265 Saline soil, 9, 11, 33, 66, 102, 112, 255 Salt marshes, 53, 62, 69–71, 78, 90, 276 Salt production, 14, 71–2, 208, 257, 279 Saltwater intrusion, ix, 6–7, 9–11, 69, 74, 77, 91, 103, 137, 216, 255, 283, 284 Sand along beach ridge, 197–8, 206, 207 around mountains, 173, 174, 179, 286 dredging, 208, 217 dunes, 8, 22, 33, 37, 43–7, 50–1, 54–5, 68, 71, 75, 86, 114, 152, 216, 275, 276, 287 in old alluvial plateau, 221, 222, 227, 230, 289 in temple grounds, 35, 41 use in magic, 57, 99 Sandstone, 222 Sanskrit, 164, 210, 241 Sarongs, 101, 179, 181, 190, 224 Sawmills, 43 Schooling difficulties, x, 188 Schools (state system), ix, 51, 59, 60, 92, 95, 140, 149, 176–7, 184, 212, 246, 260, 262, 263 in Cambodia, 87 in temple grounds, 93–4, 100, 101, 120, 150, 260–1, 278, 279 Sea level, 7, 128, 162, 198, 217, 282, 288 Sea level rise, 10 Sea shells, 154 Seasonal festivals, xiii, 17, 40–1, 88, 143, 179, 183, 246, 278

312

Index

Seasons, 1–2, 12, 14, 26, 82 brackish water, 33, 48, 69, 86, 139, 143, 144, 197, 216, 283, 284 flood, 6, 33, 36, 76, 105, 111, 171, 193 Sesame, 196 Sharks, 192 Shellfish, 83, 206, 215 Shelling, 59, 118, 121–3, 185, 192, 210, 289, 290 Shipwrecks, 39, 76, 153–60, 166, 266 Shiva linga, 164, 286 Shrimp, 71, 139 ponds, xiii, 72, 92–3, 100, 204–5, 208, 214, 215–7, 257 Si ma perimeter stones, 41, 75 Siam legends, 136, 166–7 troops, 166 wars, 136, 166–7 Silt, 110, 112, 137, 139 in house construction, 111, 138, 140, 256, 280–1 in temple construction, 76, 143–4, 146 Sita (Neang Seda), 165 Slingshots, 140 Sluice gates, 10, 43, 71, 91, 137 Smuggling, 17, 184, 188, 190, 208 Snails, 71, 83, 139 Snakes, 167, 171, 195, 201, 202, 227 myths about, 130, 208 Soc Trang (Khleang) province, 31, 38, 42, 68–102, 129, 134, 150–1, 160, 166, 190, 212, 223, 237, 245, 273, 277, 279, 283, 286 city, 74–5, 89, 95, 276, 277

Social stratification among Khmers, 63, 77, 87, 115–6, 140, 182, 231 Socialist reforms, 15, 26, 59, 60, 99, 280 Socio-economic disadvantage (of Khmers), x, 23–4 Soldiers contemporary Vietnamese, 108, 188, 211, 287 French, 118, 121, 123 ghosts, 57 Khmer Krom, 52, 117, 208, 236, 237 Khmer Rouge, 185, 260 Lao, 75 National Liberation Front, 184, 185, 210, 215, 289 of Khmer king, 49, 56, 80, 82 of Vietnamese court, 56, 57 Siamese, 136, 166 South Vietnamese, 122, 184, 210, 215, 278 US, 121 Viet Minh, 184, 210, 215 Son Kui (governor), 2, 57, 58, 62 Song Be province, 237 Sorcery, 155, 190, 225, 263, 269, 270 South China Sea, 41, 102, 128 Species decline, 27, 60, 92, 184–5, 187, 215, 217, 218, 227–8 Spirits, 4, 40, 41, 52–3, 167, 220, 231, 232, 247, 250, 264–5, 275, 284 Springs, 173, 174, 175, 199–200, 201, 207, 217, 273, 287 Sri Lanka, 37–8, 285 Stereotypes about Khmers, x, 3, 6, 8, 15, 16, 18, 21–2, 24, 27, 100, 177, 214, 245, 252, 256 Stieng ethnic group, 231, 288



Index

Stilt houses, 6, 8, 111, 169, 182, 228, 230, 280, 289 abandonment of, 111, 229, 230, 256, 281, 289 as marker of social distinction, 77, 116, 229 perceived backwardness of, 225–6 symbol of Khmer identity, 6, 101, 190, 224, 225 Stilt temple buildings, 76, 144 Stingray, 83 Stone axes, 221 Storks, ix, 288 Storms, 28, 74–6, 111, 194, 197, 203, 207, 264, 265, 276 Submerged forests, 128, 129, 136, 193 Sub-regional comparisons, xi–xii, 11–4, 32, 66–7, 69–70, 102–3, 112, 129, 151–3, 177, 180–3, 190, 212–3, 219–26, 227, 231, 238, 242 Sugarcane, 230, 231, 238, 284 Sugar palm (thnaot), 6, 171, 187, 198, 235 harvesting and processing, 171, 177, 190, 202 in house construction, 197, 229 in well construction, 286 symbol of Khmer identity, 4, 6, 101, 238 trade in, 183, 202 Superstition, criticisms, 99, 226, 241, 248 Suvannaphum, 36, 37, 65, 67, 271 Swamps, 7–9, 13 animals in, 136, 195, 288 as battlegrounds, 25, 86–7, 278 draining, 14, 26, 89, 91, 137, 148, 203, 279 economic exploitation, 43, 77,

313

138, 140, 193, 202, 256 haunted, 39–40, 264–5 Sweet potato, 170

Taiwanese factories, 245 Takeo province (Cambodia), 182, 185, 285, 287 Tam Binh district, 105, 109, 274, 280, 282 Tamarind, 202 Tattoos, 56, 171, 181, 190, 263 Tay migrants in south, 234 Tay Ninh province (Rhuom Daumrei), 219–42, 288, 289, 290 Teochiu, 41, 73, 74, 86, 90, 215 Teovada, 1 Thach Sanh (Khmer Krom folk hero), 191–2, 197, 218 Thai networks in Indochina, 16, 194 Thailand, 16, 38, 64, 65, 134, 153, 166, 181, 184, 226, 234, see also Siam Theravada Buddhism among Chinese, 63–4, 87 among Khmers, ix, 2, 4, 17–20, 85, 87–8, 116, 126–7, 142–3, 147, 194–5, 197, 233, 236, 248 among Vietnamese, 87, 236, 239–41, 247–8, 250, 269 Theravada temples, see wats Thoi Lai town, 120–5 Thot Not district, 118 Tien Giang province (Me Sar), 104, 279 Tien Hou (goddess), 73 Tieu Can district, 47, 245 Tigers as landscape creators, 130 attacks by, 108, 110, 131

314

Index

decline of, 185, 195, 289 former abundance of, 130, 131, 167, 195, 202, 227 ghosts, 196 in stories, 134, 191 religious vocations of, 132 Tinh Bien district (Krabao), 167, 168, 175, 286 Tobacco, 170, 287 Tonkinese migrants, 148, 210, 233, 273 Tonle Sap, 272 Topography, 8–9, 28, 224 Toponyms, xi, xiii, xiv, 29, 36, 83, 95, 97, 105, 106, 136–7, 152, 167, 227, 267, 269, 280 Tourism, 188, 190, 208, 211–2, 213, 214 Tourists, 32, 194, 208, 213, 214, 244 Tra Cu district (T’khau), 34, 38, 43, 46, 61–6, 243, 245 Tra On district, 45, 119, 280, 282 Tra Vinh province (Preah Trapeang), 31–67, 68, 94, 102–6, 136, 151, 190, 212, 223–4, 236, 241–3, 274–6, 289, 290 as Khmer cultural centre, 32, 66–7, 151, 190, 212, 223, 236, 242 “cultural missionaries” from, 32, 220–1, 236, 241, 242, 290 Trade, 17, 24, 27, 79, 80, 97, 141, 152, 159, 164, 209, 256, 258 cattle, 177, 183, 190, 231 clay, 231 coconuts, 50 crabs, 171 cross-border, 163, 188, 189–90, 193, 208, 213, 239, 264 honey, 284 medicinal, 177, 189, 190, 215, 275

mobile local groceries, 141, 176, 182 palm sugar, 183, 202 rushes, 80, 284 water, 10, 142, 200, 273, 287 water urns, 200 Traders (non-Khmer) Cham Muslims, 17, 23, 141, 177, 273 Chinese, 23, 63, 80, 115, 137, 141, 177, 209 Vietnamese, 60, 116, 273 Traps, 42, 139, 140, 171 Treasure hunters, 154, 157, 166, 267, 285 Tri Ton district (Sva Ton), xiv, 162–8, 177, 180, 243, 245 Trinh Hoai Duc, 10, 222, 273 Tu An Hieu Nghia (religious group), 184 Tubers, 171, 201, 211 Tunnels, 208–9, 266 Turtles, 77, 117, 130

U Minh forest, 128, 136, 210

Vam Co River, 222, 234 Vegetables, 43, 46, 54, 60, 71, 73, 77, 80, 91, 149, 170, 176 Vernacular modernisation, 32, 99, 141, 152, 176–83, 245, 251, 263–4 Vernacular transport networks, xii, 5, 13, 16–7, 50–2, 68, 78–85, 112–5, 152–3, 176–83, 206–10, 256–7, 276 Vi Thanh district, 99, 120, 282 Viet Minh, 88, 89, 118, 119, 123, 184, 281 Vietnam War, see Indochina wars



Index

Vietnamese proficiency among Khmers, ix, 69, 74, 97–8, 152, 188–9, 209, 212, 243, 245, 247–9, 263 Viets (Kinh, Annamites, Vietnamese) Khmer perceptions of, 24, 28, 41–2, 61, 110–1, 151, 192, 210, 224, 234, 268 livelihoods, 14, 17, 23, 24, 41, 60, 87, 116, 210, 214, 233, 273 migration, 7, 8, 19, 20–2, 42, 90, 118–9, 137, 148, 151, 210, 233, 238, 273 religious practices, 118, 125, 150, 183–4, 188, 197, 231, 232–3, 236, 239–41, 247–8, 250–1, 269–70 settlement patterns, 7–9, 16–7, 24, 39, 42, 103, 107, 137, 148, 210, 267 Vinh Chau district (Chrui Nhua), 71–2, 90, 93, 99, 276, 278, 284 Vinh Long province (Long Hor), 31, 41, 55, 102, 105, 107, 116, 126, 274, 275, 280, 281, 282 Vinh Te Canal, 183 Vinh Thuan district, 134, 136, 284, 285 Vo Van Kiet, 64 Vossa (rainy season retreat), 41, 143, 247, 278, 279 Vow-keeping days, 85, 179, 247 Vung Liem district (Kompong Rhol Lien), 45, 55, 105 Vung Tau (O Cap), 160, 219, 222, 226, 236, 237, 240, 243

Wage labour, 24, 92, 214, 231, 245 Walls (protective), 41, 49, 57, 75, 204, 222, 262

315

Wats and life-cycle ceremonies, 17, 53, 143, 179, 190 as symbols of Khmer identity, 18–20, 152, 233 festivals in, 17–8, 41, 85, 88, 96, 98, 115, 126, 143–4, 147, 154–5, 175–6, 179–81, 189–90, 201, 212, 242, 246, 290 in the transmission of Khmer culture, 18–9, 57–8, 62, 224, 241, 262, 263 Pali studies in, 51, 87, 94, 121, 126–7, 130, 143, 150, 181, 210, 212, 231, 241, 248, 262 ponds in, 47–9, 85–6, 144–5, 174–5, 198 state schools in, 93–4, 100, 101, 120, 150, 260–1, 278, 279 Wat Ounalom, Phnom Penh, 239 Wells, 11, 43, 45, 68, 86, 91, 148, 173–4, 179, 182, 189, 198–201, 207–8, 216, 227, 256, 273, 286, 287 Warfare Khmer Krom participation in, 25, 52, 56, 57, 88–9, 117, 118, 208, 236, 237 Water acidic, 6, 9–11, 139, 173, 197, 203, 255 brackish, 33, 48, 69, 86, 139, 143, 144, 197, 216, 283, 284 buying and selling, 10, 142, 200, 273, 287 contamination, 60, 61, 92, 112, 149, 189, 244 in temples, 47–9, 85–6, 144–5, 174–5, 198, 201, 216

316

Index

scarcity, 9–11, 33, 45, 76, 139, 149, 173, 193, 197–8, 201, 255 storage jars, 112, 116, 131, 182, 200, 276, 281 supply (state), 175, 176, 201, 287, 289 toxicity, xiii, 9, 200, 202 Waterbirds, ix, 202, 288 Water coconut (Nipa palm), 80, 83, 106, 136, 138, 140, 141

Water hyacinth, 141 Water ghost, 39, 133–4, 283 Wax, 140, 202 Weaving, 181, 277 Whales, 193 Wind, 1, 4, 39, 76, 203, 207, 275

Yeay Mao, 270 Yoni stone, 135, 283

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996‒1999, by Jemma Purdey, 2005 Other Malays: Nationalism ������������ and �������������������� Cosmopolitanism in �������������������� the Modern Malay World, by Joel S. Kahn, 2006 History in Uniform: Military ������������������������������������������ Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia’s Past,�������������� by Katharine E. ��� McGregor, �������������� 2007 Cham Muslims of the Mekong Delta: Place �������������������������� and Mobility in the Cosmopolitan Periphery, by Philip Taylor, 2007 Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage: Contesting �������������������� Culture, Embracing Change, by Barbara Hatley, 2008 Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating ����������������������������������� Urban Space in Malaysia, by Ross ��������������� King, 2008 Kampung, Islam and State in Urban Java, by Patrick Guinness, 2009 Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia, edited by Andrew Walker, 2009 Workers and Intellectuals: NGOs, �������������������������������������� Trade Unions and the Indonesian Labour Movement, by Michele Ford, 2009 Madurese Seafarers: Prahus, Timber and Illegality on the Margins of the Indonesian State, by Kurt Stenross, 2011 Development Professionals in Northern Thailand: Hope, Politics and Practice, by Katharine McKinnon, 2011 The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia, 1965‒68, edited by Douglas Kammen and Katharine McGregor, 2012

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Surabaya, 1945‒2010: Neighbourhood, State and Economy in Indonesia’s City of Struggle, by Robbie Peters, 2013 Squatters into Citizens: The ��������� 1961 Bukit �������������� Ho Swee Fire �������������������� and the Making of Modern Singapore, by Loh Kah Seng, 2013 Being Malay in Indonesia: Histories, Hopes and Citizenship in the Riau Archipelago, by Nicholas Long, 2013 Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia, by Marcus Mietzner, 2013

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