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Chapter 3 Khmer C ambodian refugees come from a “hybrid culture” (Chandler 1996, 80) and thus arrive in the United States thinking that ethnic boundaries are porous and that ethnic identities are liminal. A well-known origin story symbolizes their worldview. It concerns an Indian prince named Kambu, who travels to Southeast Asia and marries a dragon-princess (Osborne 2000). The region at this time is covered by ocean and the father-in-law dragon drinks enough water to leave dry land for the couple to live on. This new country is named Kambuja, after the prince, from which the name Cambodia is derived. Milton Osborne (1988, 22) interprets this origin story as a statement about the value of inter-ethnic contact: “It is not surprising that the Cambodian national birth legend, to take only one example, sees the legendary marriage of a Brahman with a local princess as the beginning of Cambodia’s rise to greatness that culminated in the Angkorian period.” In fact, several historically significant Cambodian kings married princesses from neighboring countries, including one king who subsequently converted to Islam (Chandler 1996; Higham 2001). This theme of bridging and blending cultures reoccurs in multiple ways throughout Cambodian history. A Hybrid Nation-State Khmer-speaking Theravada Buddhists constituted about 85 to 90 percent of Cambodia’s population prior to 1975 (Steinberg 1959). Ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cham (Muslims) accounted for about 13 percent of the population, with mountain-dwelling ethnic groups constituting the remainder. Although lacking racial and ethnic diversity as measured by American indicators of pluralism, the central theme in Khmer history is cultural fusion. Some of the most significant features of the Khmer nation-state came from India (Coe 2003; Coedès 1968). Indian merchants began arriving by ship circa A.D. 100, part of a larger flow of trade from the Middle East and China to Southeast Asia. The annual east to west shift in the monsoon winds made the region a natural terminus for commerce, as did the 45 resources in its tropical jungles. From Funan in the southern part of present-day Vietnam, Indian civilization spread through cultural osmosis rather than conquest. It made a lasting impact on the Khmer (Chandler 1996, 12), one that transcended the period of kings and feudal states: In the nineteenth century, for example, Cambodian peasants still wore recognizably Indian costumes, and in many ways they behaved more like Indians than they did like their closest neighbors, the Vietnamese. Cambodians eat with spoons and fingers [not chopsticks], for example, and carried goods on their heads; they wore turbans rather than straw hats and skirts rather than trousers. Musical instruments, jewelry, and manuscripts were also Indian in style. In addition to material imports from India, Cambodian civilization incorporated Hinduism and Buddhism (Coe 2003; Coedès 1968). As in other parts of Southeast Asia, Cambodian rulers encouraged this cultural transfer because the new ideologies transformed them from an aristocracy into deified mediators with divine powers (Kulke 1984). India’s more bureaucratically advanced political system provided Southeast Asian kings with a means of better administering their states. Hinduism also promoted caste distinctions and respect for title and authority. Brahmanist values are reflected in Cambodians’ hierarchical status distinctions and deference for rank such as teacher, monk, and government official (Steinberg 1959). Buddhism provided an elaborate cultural legitimation for this hierarchy, since it stressed nonviolence and acceptance of the existing social order (Houtart 1977). To encourage their subjects’ adherence to Buddhism, kings became the benefactors of the sangha— celibate monks who devoted their lives to Buddhist practice—by granting monasteries land and donating food. Cambodian kings promoted the adoption of a Hindu and Buddhist social order for political reasons, but economy and geography grounded this process of cultural amalgamation (Coedès 1968). The cycle of monsoon rice agriculture exists in southern India and Cambodia. These conditions provided a common material foundation in both regions even prior to contact. Rather than Indian influence being imposed on Cambodia, numerous features of Cambodian society facilitated the incorporation and modification of a new culture. The arrival of Indian civilization initiated cultural hybridization in Cambodia, and the process continued as a result of demography (Higham 2001). Land was more plentiful than people, and scarcity of people meant scarcity of labor. As a result, slavery was central to the Indianized economy and social order that preceded the great Khmer kingdom of Angkor as well as during Angkor itself (circa 800–1431). 46...

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