The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty

Introduction

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 949. Many Khmers in Cambodia are familiar with maps that demarcate the “water and land” (tuk dei) of Kampuchea Krom into  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...