After years studying a remote temple hidden on the Thai-Cambodian border, author John Burgess reveals new insights into the ancient mysteries of the Khmer Empire.
Bangkok, Thailand – In 1052 AD, ancient Khmer priests carved a sandstone monolith with an extraordinary royal history at the temple of Sdok Kok Thom. By the 14th century, however, war and political upheaval caused the collapse of the once-might Khmers, and this story was lost to the world for centuries. As a reporter for the Washington Post in 1979, John Burgess was covering the Cambodian refugee crisis when he first entered this obscure temple.
His tenacious pursuit of its historical mystery are now available in his new book, “Stories in Stone - The Sdok Kok Thom Inscription & the Enigma of Khmer History.”
"Stories in Stone - The Sdok Kok Thom Inscription & the Enigma of Khmer History" - 2010 - Riverbooks
Stories in Stone – The Sdok Kok Thom Inscription
The founding of an empire, the settling of frontier lands, a king’s gifting of gold pitchers and black-eared stallions to a Brahmin priest – these and other remarkable stories come down to us in the Sdok Kok Thom Inscription, one of the world’s most important ancient testaments.
Recovered at a ruined temple in Thailand close to the Cambodian border, the 340-line chronicle unlocks the early history of the Khmer Empire. Yet temple and text have remained little known outside expert circles.
In this full and highly readable account, former Washington Post correspondent John Burgess traces the impact of the great inscription, which was carved onto a sandstone monolith around 1052 AD, abandoned to the wild for centuries, then decoded by French colonialists. He relates the temple’s surprise emergence in 1979 as a haven for Cambodian refugees and resistance fighters during the war in their homeland. Today Sdok Kok Thom is again at peace, its mission of preserving history accomplished.
The detailed book includes photographs of the temple, past and present, Refugee Camp 007 and its refugees and militias; extracts from previously unpublished letters of French savant Étienne Aymonier, the inscription’s first translator, written during his months of travels around Cambodia in 1882-1885; a revised English translation of the full inscription by the University of Hawaii linguists Chhany Sak-Humphry and Philip N. Jenner; a glossary of terms; and suggested further readings.
‘While reporting on Cambodians fleeing war and revolution in 1979, John Burgess came across an ancient Khmer temple hidden in the bush… 30 years later he returned to that temple to decipher its history. The result is this lovely book that tells the story of the temple and the larger Angkor Empire leavened with Burgess’ own odyssey to recover that history.’
Elizabeth Becker
Author of When the War was Over
About the Author
John Burgess worked at the Washington Post for 28 years, most recently as Deputy Foreign Editor in charge of Europe, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. John’s career as a journalist began in Southeast Asia and he later served as Tokyo bureau chief for The Post in 1984-87. Since retiring he has been able to devote more time to his passion for historical study, with a month of research in Thailand and Cambodia allowing him to complete his work on the mysteries of Sdok Kok Thom.
Hear the author discuss Sdok Kok Thom on this NPR radio interview.
For the latest information please visit the Stories in Stone website.
John Burgess at Sdok Kok Thom
Availability
Available now from Riverbooks in Bangkok
Available for advance order on Amazon in the USA
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A wonderful book! I love it! Reading it was a great pleasure. The book is written with loving care, and with profound expertise (virtues that have become rare in today’s publications).
The text brings back to live the history and the present of Khmer civilization. It gives an entertaining introduction to the history of Angkor, and it may deepen our insights.
Holy Ground Contested, the presentation of the Preah Vihear border conflict is by far the best I know. So is Dates Confused, the history of the inquiry about the location of the ‘Central Mountain’ in Yasodharapura/Angkor.
Let me try to cast a light to some of the enigma: The Great Conqueror (p. 65-71) and Dates Confused (p. 81-89).
The Great Conqueror
Trudy Jacobsen, having studied contemporary inscriptions, is ‘Deconstructing Jayavarman’ … Jayavarman II is usually credited with single-handedly ‘liberating’ Cambodia from ‘Java’ and unifying a fragmented Cambodia. It is true that between 780 and 824 Jayavarman II established his position as sovereign in the polities of Indrapura, Vyadhapura, Malyang, Hariharalaya (Roluos), Amarendrapura, and on Mount Mahendra (Phnom Kulen). He also married at least six other women.
Much is made of Jayavarman II’s courage in taking on the rest of the country in order to unite the land under one king. In fact he seems to have accomplished this remarkable feat relatively bloodlessly through marriage with women who symbolised the land in the places. (Trudy Jacobsen, Lost goddesses: the denial of female power in Cambodian history, Copenhagen, 2008, p. 28-31)
Dates Confused
Why was the Phnom Bakheng recognized so late as the central temple of Angkor?
The pyramid of the temple was crowned by five sandstone towers in a quincunx – four towers in the corners of the square, and one bigger tower in the centre. Here this ingenious creation of Khmer architecture was realised for the first time.
But, Henri Mouhot, the first to describe the site in his report, published 1864:
This building belongs to a period much anterior to that of many of the other monuments. Art, like science, was in its infancy. Taste was of a grand description, but genius was not in proportion The centre of the terrace formed by the last story is only a confused mass of ruins from the fallen towers.
What had happened?
Before clearing the upper terrace [1919-1930], it was covered with a considerable pile of stones, which were found to be the base of an enormous Buddha statue, probably dating from the end of the fifteenth century… … two of [the towers] were entirely destroyed when the statue was built, and only parts of the other three allow for the reconstitution of the core of the central building but its upper part cannot be reconstituted. (Jacques Dumarçay, & Pascale Royère, Cambodian Architecture: Eighth to Thirteenth Century, Leiden, 2001, p. 57.)
Indeed, what has happened here is unbelievable!
Again: A great book, an absorbing and a stimulating reading!
Johann Reinhart Zieger – angkorguide.net