62 barefoot dancers gather at the temple of Preah Vihear on the tense Cambodian-Thai border to perform a sacred ritual for peace led by Ravynn Karet-Coxen (right).

A religious ceremony of rare intensity took place August 17 in the temple of Preah Vihear, where sixty-two young girls danced a sacred ritual to pray for peace. Originating the event was Ravynn Karet Coxen, founder of the Nginn-Karet Foundation for Cambodia.

By Frédéric Amat

© 2010 Cambodge Soir – This translation of the original article appears with the permission of the copyright holder. No further reproduction is permitted.

PREAH VIHEAR, CAMBODIA — Sixty-two girls, entirely dressed in white reminiscent of Rome’s Vestal Virgins, performed a Buong Suong (sacred ritual) before the astonished eyes of soldiers stationed in the heart of Preah Vihear temple, which is located four hours by road from Siem Reap.

All the dancers come from impoverished families living in the villages of Banteay Srey district, which is considered to be the cradle of the Khmer culture. All attend classes at the Conservatoire Buppha Devi, which was founded by the Nginn Karet Foundation and named for its Royal Patron. With specialized dance and music teachers, the Conservatoire offers these disadvantaged children from farming families the opportunity to learn the refined disciplines of classical dance, folk dance, music and shadow theater thereby discovering their country’s ancient culture and learning traditional Cambodian values.

The troupe of Nginn Karet Foundation dancers gather at Preah Vihear

According to Ravynn, “our institution doesn’t aim to train these young artists to later work in the tourist venues of nearby Siem Reap town. The arts we teach develop the spirit, mind and body by creating close communion with nature. These young dancers train to perform sacred rituals that honor and invoke our gods with the pure respect of our ancestral traditions.

“These rituals, and their associated gestures, have been developed over a thousand years to petition the heavens to bless our country and to attract prosperity and abundance to our land. Today, Angkor’s temples are perceived more for tourism or for their archaeological aspects, but rarely for their spiritual quality, which is a pity. Our goal is to re-sanctify our ancestor’s temples with these purifying rites”.

Sacred dancers ascending Preah Vihear temple with offerings of peace.

For these young artists, discipline is strict. They are required to regularly attend the training six half-days every week; the other half-days being devoted to academic studies.

In the Hindu (not Buddhist) ritual that took place at Preah Vihear — as for other ceremonies previously organized by Ravynn and members of her foundation — the dancers must be “pure”, which is to say virgins. They are not adorned with makeup or jewelry, so as to enhance the beauty of the gestures and to preserve the piety of the rites.

Gathering Lustral Water at Preah Vihear's sacred pond Srea Meas.

The adornments and offerings are therefore natural, carved by the dancers and teachers from banana trunks or designed with plants, flowers and fruits, each having a specific symbolic meaning.

“The same is true of our Institution of Royalty, which is paramount for the Khmer because it represents the divine presence on earth and the protection of the Kingdom. In accord with the ideals of the Devaraja religion of Jayavarman II, prayers, incantations and pilgrimages are all necessary to strengthen the soul of our country. I fundamentally believe that when the sacred sites have been respected as such, and re-sanctified, Cambodia will regain peace.

“It is with this goal that we organized this sacred ritual at Preah Vihear with 62 dancers. This number is not without significance, by the way. It commemorates the irrevocable judgment of the International Court of Justice of The Hague, delivered in 1962, that granted Cambodia the right to regain the sovereignty of Preah Vihear,” explains Ravynn, whose father, Nginn Karet, participated in the World Court proceedings as an expert engineer geographer.

The sacred dancers began their blessing ritual at the foot of the mountain.

So, at Preah Vihear, sixty-two dancers, candles and sticks of incense in hand, ascended hundreds of temple steps, from the mountain’s base to its final courtyard. The young ladies gently and beautifully invoked the names of all the Khmer gods, royal spirits, kings, spiritual masters, ancestors and the leaders of modern Cambodia, as they stopped at each Gopura (an entry structure on each level) to perform special ceremonies using lustral water gathered from the temple’s sacred pond of Srea Meas.

As the sacred ritual concluded storm clouds gathered and raindrops fell -- to the dancers it was a sign that their gods had heard their pleas for peace.

Focused on their ritual dance they reached the highest point at the edge of a cliff, offering their final prayers for tensions to subside so that this sacred site is again peaceful.

When all nine dance rituals were complete the witnesses were awed to see the sky darken. Within minutes lighting flashed, thunder rumbled and heavy rain descended near the mountain. On the top, only a mist of spray touched the gathered troupe of dancers, who saw it as a sign that the gods had heard their plea and accepted the Buong Suong.

This was the first time in many centuries that a sacred Hindu rite was celebrated in Preah Vihear temple; a rite for peace, at the summit of Cambodia, in this sanctuary mid-way between Heaven and Earth.

***

Cambodge Soir is the most important French language newspaper published in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is distributed throughout the country and is available online for purchase by the single issue or by subscription (online edition).

Cultor.org educators have now translated the initial results into Italian, and produced the captivating video overview below for Italian viewers.

Founded by the University of Turin in 1999, Cultor — an acronym forCultura Torino— now provides exceptional cultural resources online at Cultor.org. Their extensive Internet resource has become one of the most important cultural websites in Europe with more than 18,000 visitors each month.

A New Study Offers Historical Insight
on the Temple’s Female Imagery

By Michelle Vachon – The Cambodia Daily

© 2010 The Cambodia Daily – This article appears with the permission
of the copyright holder. No further reproduction is permitted.

The Cambodia Daily's Weekend featuring the women of Angkor Wat

In 1927, Sappho Marchal, the 23-year-old daughter of Henri Marchal who was over­seeing restoration of monuments at Angkor Wat at the time, published a book on the hair­styles, clothes and jewelry of 1,737 sculptures of women she had located on the walls and columns of Angkor Wat.

And until recently, no archeologist or historian at Angkor had wondered why so many nearly life-size images of human beings filled the 12th century monument and why these sculptures were only of women, said Kent Davis, a researcher and publisher of DatAsia Press.

“Despite 150 years of intense study, the Khmer pundits who surveyed every temple and measured every stone only thought to consider these women as decorations, rather than as people.” Mr Davis said.

“Visitors were apparently content when the experts told them that the most complex collection of full-body portrait carvings ever created in a single ancient human generation were simply ‘Imaginary wives to serve the king in heaven’ Total nonsense, but it flew for 150 years.”

Angkor Wat general devata types.

One researcher had written a short essay on the resemblance between the features on a few sculptures and hill tribe women.

Another had viewed the sculptures in a mythological context but without going further, he said.

So Mr Davis embarked on his own research in 2005, eventually getting in touch with art historian Peter Sharrock and archaeologist Robert McCarthy, who are studying these woman sculptures but concentrating on the era of Jayavarman VII, which took place about two generations after the construction of Angkor Wat.

Devata faces from the inside wall of the West Gopura at Angkor Wat.

Scholars refer to the women as devatas (deities), when portrayed in large sculptures, and apsaras (dancers and singers of the gods), when groups appear in smaller sculptures.

Mr Davis has identified 1,796 sculpted images on Angkor Wat through his research, expanding on inventories done by stone conservators with the German Apsara Conservation Project.

Once Mr Davis took digital photos of the group, he asked a team from Michigan State University in the US for help developing a computer tool to analyze the sculptures.

This has prompted the first scientific study to be conducted on Angkor Wat’s women figures. Its results will be presented on Sunday in Istanbul at the conference of the International Association for Pattern Recognition on computer vision.

Angkor Wat general devata types.

Anil K. Jain — a professor in several of the university’s departments including computer science and engineering, statistics and probability — will explain the computer analysis model that he and two of his students developed to analyze the features of women sculpted on the surface of the monument.

For this first study, Mr Jain and his team concentrated on 252 devatas located on Angkor Wat’s entrance pavilion called the West Gopura.

As they mention in the summary of their study entitled “Clustering Face Carvings: Exploring the Devatas of Angkor Wat [925k PDF download],” Mr Jain and his team had to devise a program to compare devatas on well preserved as well as eroded stone and on different types of stone, which some existing programs did not make possible.

Features of some devata faces were damaged by erosion over the centuries.

They designed the tool to analyze whole faces, proportions in features, such as the distance between the eyes or between nose and mouth, as well as specific features including ears and chins. This program will also give future researchers the flexibility to change features to be analyzed.

“While the landmarks for many different facial components were marked, in this study we used only four of the major facial components (eyes, nose, mouth and face outline) for clustering the devatas into 8 groups,” they write in their summary. [see bottom of article for composites of facial feature variations]

These groups of devatas sharing specific features may reflect the features of women who actually lived at Angkor at the time and the fact that they came from different regions such as central Cambodia, Laos, northern­central Thailand, Champa in today’s Vietnam, and China.

The initial pattern recognition algorithm defined eight distinct facial types.

“There is [a report from the year 1225] in China which says 200 foreign women danced and made offerings to the Buddha in Jayavarman VII’s temples. So Angkor was an international center,” Mr Sharrock wrote in an e-mail.

However, whether these eight groups of devatas correspond to women who lived at Angkor when the temple was built has yet to be seen, he said, “These are early results only. More tuning and more data manipulation is needed before strong claims can be made.”

In Mr McCarthy’s opinion, the sculptures may be idealized versions of living women who served as royal temple caretakers.

“The possibility that the role of guardian was taken by both female (in the majority) and male (in the minority) should not be ignored. Just as age and region of origin within the Khmer Empire does not appear to be a problematic factor within the devata community of temple guardians,” he wrote in an email.

Angkor Wat general devata types.

Both Mr Sharrock and Mr McCarthy agree that this computer analysis tool shows great potential.

“In Angkor Wat there are clearly differences between the elaborately coiffed devata inside the outer western gallery and inside the courtyards of the main temple and the more powerful, larger and more serious-faced devata on the higher level of the temple and the central tower. Why there are these differences we do not yet understand.” Mr Sharrock said Mr Davis’ research with this computer program may help answer some of those questions, he added.

When analysis expands to include more features such as headdresses, jewelry, hands and feet, the differences from one to the other image may help, Mr McCarthy said, “unlock secrets of not only the devata of Angkor Wat but those earlier and later devata traits [...] to assist in identifying artistic techniques that may lead to the identity, in unique styles only, of the craft people who supervised and those who carved the bas-reliefs.”

Mr Davis’ goal is to include Mr Jain’s program in a comprehensive database of Angkor Wat’s 1,796 sculpted images of women that tracks 65 characteristics — including location, features, compass orientation, hair styles, jewelry designs, hand positions, fabric patterns — of each image, he said.

He is now editing in a book [Daughters of Angkor Wat] compiling researcher’s opinions and speculations regarding the devata sculptures over the past 100 years.

***

Facial Feature Variations

Angkor Wat eye composite photos.

Angkor Wat devata nose comparison photos.

Angkor Wat devata mouth comparison photos.

Angkor Wat chin comparison photos.

Cultor's Oriental section presents research translations from authoritative experts in a variety of fields.

TURIN, ITALY — The European Renaissance (Rinascimento) began in 14th century Italy. Now, 21st century Italians are learning about Khmer contributions to world art and culture in their native language thanks to Cultor.org.

Founded by the University of Turin in 1999, Cultor — an acronym for Cultura Torino — now provides exceptional cultural resources online at Cultor.org. Their extensive Internet resource has become one of the most important cultural websites in Europe with more than 18,000 visitors each month.

Recently, Cultor.org began translating original research about the Khmer civilization from Devata.org. Devata focuses on investigating the sacred women depicted at Angkor Wat, a 12th century Hindu temple located in northern Cambodia. The vast Angkor area is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Angkor Wat fascinates archeologists and tourists alike, yet the temples most amazing treasure remained unexamined. According to Devata.org founder Kent Davis: “Angkor Wat contains the most extraordinary ancient portrait gallery in the world, and every subject honored is a woman.”

Throughout the immense stone building, Davis has cataloged 1,796 individual Asian women who appear in highly detailed full-body carvings. They are now called devata or apsaras — Sanskrit terms for heavenly maidens of great beauty and elegance — but no one knows what the ancient Khmer people called them or what roles they served in the society.

Who were they? Why did designers choose only women to dominate their greatest temples? No one knows. When the civilization collapsed, its people vanished without leaving any written records about Angkor Wat’s design or meaning.

Cultor's logo shows the Turin coat of arms.

Devata.org founder Kent Davis fully supports the Cultor exchange saying “Italian sculptors have rendered and appreciated classic human forms in stone for millennia. To me, this makes Italian scholars and students ideal observers to consider the refined women of Angkor Wat. I look forward to hearing their opinions after reading about this mystery in their own language.”

According to Cultor.org’s manager of media relations, Enzo Di Gesù, Cultor is an organization of scholars, independent of political and religious beliefs, seeking to disseminate information on the history, art and aesthetics of cultures around the world. The online environment allows Cultor to emphasize both academic and artistic aspects in their virtual exhibitions.

For more information, please visit the Cultor.org resources below:

Aesthetics

City of Turin

Cultor International Partners

Documents and historical research

Eastern art and culture

The Turin Laboratory focuses on the history and the development of the city itself.

With the fervor of a saint,
I have taken it upon myself to tell the world
of the beauties of the kingdom of Cambodia
and the virtues of the Khmer people.

Thus I pay my debt of gratitude for their warm hospitality.

The opening lines of Roland Meyer’s epic tale of Cambodia: Saramani

Article by Kent Davis

Roland Meyer, self portrait, circa 1909

At the end of the 19th century, a young French boy dreamt of finding a tropical paradise. Books about Pacific island adventures and the discovery of lost cities in the dense jungles of Southeast Asia fueled his imagination. Soon, the urge to travel was irresistible but what set this young man apart from thousands of others is that he shared his stories.

Roland Théodore Emile Meyer was born in Moscow on July 10, 1889. His parents moved to Paris where, after his education, he enrolled in the Indochinese colonial service in 1908 at the age of 19.

Meyer first served for three months in Saigon as a cabinet aide to Governor-General Paul Beau in Saigon. Upon moving to Cambodia in 1909 Meyer’s life changed forever as he immersed himself in the history, language and lifestyle of the modern descendants of the ancient Khmers.

Unlike other colonials, Meyer chose to assimilate with the indigenous culture surrounding him, learning the local language, customs, religion and even setting up his home among the natives outside the French quarter of the town. Meyer was a living example of a visitor who “went native”, much to the surprise of some of his fellow colonials. In 1912, Meyer published Cours de cambodgien, the first book to teach the Khmer language to Francophones.

Cambodian Dancers by George Groslier, 2010 edition.

With Phnom Penh still a small town, Meyer soon met others who admired and respected the legacy of the great civilization that surrounded them. His small circle of friends, many of whom were founding members of The Angkor Society, came to shape the way the world sees Cambodia. They included Jean Commaille, the first conservator of the Angkor site; Henri Marchal, the second Angkor conservator who took over Commaille’s duties when he was murdered by robbers; and Charles Gravelle, director of the country’s branch of the Bank of Indochina and an avid writer himself – all men whose influence is still with us today.

Another associate embarking on a stellar career in Cambodia was George Groslier, an artist and writer two years older than Meyer, who arrived in Phnom Penh in 1910 on an educational assignment. As it turned out, both young men were captivated by a living, breathing vestige of the ancient Khmers; the sacred Cambodian dancers who lived, sequestered, in the royal palace as part of the king’s harem.

On returning to France in 1913, Groslier published Danseuses Cambodgiennes, Anciennes et Modernes, the first formal study of the sacred artistic tradition. Meyer’s experience and vision of the dance and dancers, however, went even deeper and was far more intimate.

Meyer told of a seemingly forbidden romance between East and West — between a royal dancer in the king’s harem named Saramani, and a French boy who came to Indochina to seek his destiny. The boy, like Meyer himself, “went native” and adopted the Khmer name Komlah, which means bachelor.  Through Saramani and her family, Meyer (often writing as Komlah) relates a detailed picture of love and life  in colonial Cambodia.

For a decade, Meyer recorded his notes in his personal diaries, shaping a tale in which it’s difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Saramani - Cambodian Dancer by Roland Meyer, 1919.

In 1919 Meyer published Saramani, Danseuse Khmèr in Saigon. His epic account of Cambodia stretched from the primeval formation of the land tens of millions of years ago, to the peak of the Khmer civilization at Angkor Wat, ending in the modern colonial capital of Phnom Penh. He records the lives of all he encounters on Cambodian soil; rice farmers, fishermen, immigrants, colonials, dancing girls, poor peasants, wealthy merchants, royal servants and even kings.

Saramani title page - 1919

Saramani grew to a massive work of more than 180,000 words exploring many controversial events in the guise of “fiction”. Meyer’s views of colonial lust, capitalistic greed and royal decadence were upsetting to some, to say the least. The same year of its release he transferred to Laos, perhaps out of necessity to escape local consequences…or perhaps to escape romantic entanglements that may have inspired some of the scenes throughout the book.

Was Saramani a real person? Were the book’s fantastic events based on reality or imagination?

Meyer never revealed this but his exceptional accuracy, attention to detail and congruity with historical events implies that there is much more than fiction in his account.

Sketch of a Buddhist pagoda in Ken Svai, a community on a large island in the Mekong River near Phnom Penh. By Roland Meyer, circa 1912.

Meyer worked with the French civil service until retirement. Coinciding with the French Colonial Exposition of 1931 in Paris he published two more books, Komlah, visions of Asia and French Indo-China. Laos. While Komlah relates many more personal impressions in Indochina the second title is a rather dry analysis of the Laotian country.

In 1952 his friend M. Gerard published his final work, a collection of short essays titled Le propos du vieux colonial.

Sadly, like many great men of the French colonial era, Meyer’s trail vanishes late in life. I don’t know where he died, where he is buried, if he has any descendants or what became of his archives. A sad loss to Cambodian, French and literary history.

If any readers have additional information please contact me kentdavis at gmail dot com.

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.

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

Khmer culture is featured on WHYY TV's "Art of Life" series.

Extended  Interview with Rorng Sorn

The WHYY website now features an extended interview with Rorng Sorn, who was born in rural Cambodia in 1968. In the interview, Rorng Sorn recounts the difficult road from the countryside of Cambodia to the urban streets of Philadelphia.

Rorng Sorn interviewed on WHYY TV

Despite the challenges, Rorng Sorn achieved the education she so desired, earning a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In return, she serves her community through her role as Executive Director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia.

A portrait of Rorng Sorn's family before the war.

In her inspiring interview, Rorng Sorn describes her personal experience of what life was like for her family during the Khmer Rouge and the devastation that followed. Most important, she talks about how she became a leader in Philadelphia’s Khmer community so she could contribute to preserving her culture.

Links

The Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia

WHYY Art of Life features on Cambodian culture

Cambodian Dancer Chamoeun Yin – Philadelphia Folklore Project

Khmer Art Gallery – Philadelphia

In the second month of the bingshen 丙申 year of the Yuanzhen 元貞 reign of the Yuan 元 dynasty [1296], a Chinese delegation representing the recently-crowned emperor Temür 鐵穆耳 (Chengzong 成宗; r. 1294-1307) set sail from the southern coastal city of Mingzhou 明州, headed for Cambodia.

We cannot be entirely sure of the delegation’s objective, nor of the role that was expected to be played by a young member of the mission named Zhou Daguan 周達觀.

Portrait of Emperor Temur Khan who ruled from 1294–1307. Wikipedia image.

What we do know is that Zhou’s account, written some time after the eleven months he spent in the capital Yasodharapura (now known as Angkor Thom) in 1296-97 and titled Zhenla fengtu ji 真臘風土記 [Account of the Customs and Geography of Cambodia], is the only surviving eyewitness account of the civilisation of Angkor. The work then, offers a unique glimpse of that world at the end of the thirteenth century, just as its golden age was beginning to draw to a close.

"A Record of Cambodia: Its Land and its People" by Zhou Daguan. Translated by Peter Harris.

Given the importance of Zhou’s account, it seems astonishing that this slim volume, A Record of Cambodia: The Land and its People, translated with an introduction and copious notes by Peter Harris, represents the first ever translation of the work into English directly from the classical Chinese, but this is indeed the case.

Previous English renditions (the latest reprint of which appeared in 2007) have been based solely on Paul Pelliot’s (1878-1945) masterful French version of the work, Mémoires sur les Coutumes du Cambodge of 1902, and inevitably suffer from being too far removed from the original text. Peter Harris, by contrast, is able to draw not only on Pelliot’s pioneering study (and revised version with incomplete notes, posthumously published in 1951), but also on the ground-breaking scholarship of Xia Nai 夏鼐, whose annotated edition of Zhou’s text, Zhenla fengtu ji jiaozhu 真臘風土記校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000) includes variants from thirteen editions. There is also a tremendous amount of new linguistic material in the present edition, with Harris making use of important studies by Michael Vickery, Bernhard Karlgren, Edwin G. Pulleyblank and others.

The impeccable scholarship of this study, combined with the accuracy of Harris’ fluent translation, make this version certain now to supersede that of Pelliot as the standard edition of Zhou’s account in any Western language.

The Record of Cambodia as it exists today is divided into 40 sections, but Harris notes that the present order suggests that they may at some point have been rearranged (17). Indeed, parts of the text ‘show clear signs of having been cut or mutilated’ (28), and Harris cites the seventeenth-century bibliophile Qian Zeng 錢曾 (1629–1700?), who claimed that the text on which presently-existing editions are based was ‘muddled and jumbled up, six or seven tenths of it missing, barely constituting a book at all’ (29).

As it stands it contains quite thorough descriptions of the architecture and customs at court, interesting details concerning such matters as sumptuary restrictions on dress, and more cursory observations on law, death, agriculture, sex, prostitution, slaves, language, trade, flora, animals, liquor, transport and various other topics. Harris renders Zhou’s text into accurate but free-flowing English, occasionally altering the sense of a word (the translation of the term fan 番 as ‘local’ is one example Harris himself signposts, 31-2), but always acknowledging where this has been done.

Wenzhou, China

Of Zhou Daguan himself we know almost nothing, other than that he was a native of Wenzhou 溫州, but one of the strengths of this book is Harris’ skilful evocation of the ‘kind of frontier spirit’ (5) that existed in thirteenth-century Wenzhou and the other coastal cities that helped to connect southeast China to Asia and the wider world.

These were the ports from which large quantities of raw and manufactured goods, including lacquer, celadon, ceramics, silks, cinnabar, paper, musk, pewter and glass departed daily, and the people with whom Zhou grew up, we are told, were ‘traders, merchants and sailors, broad-minded, outward-looking [and] well-versed in the affairs of the world…’ (10).

As historians increasingly seek to highlight the roles of Asian societies in the early modern world economy, and become ever more aware of the ways in which the emerging discipline of global history can enhance our understanding of early modern cultures, the publication of this new edition of Zhou Daguan’s account of Cambodia seems extremely timely. Indeed, the Yasodharapura Zhou describes is a key site of global interaction, with immigrant Siamese who, unlike the locals, engage in silk production and are competent tailors (76), geese recently introduced from China (73), and a range of Chinese goods available for sale, including paper, combs, needles, mats and much more (71). Intriguingly, Zhou also tells us that ‘although cloth is woven domestically, it also comes from Siam and Champa. Cloth from the Western Seas 西洋 is often regarded as the best because it is so well-made and refined” (50). *

If we know little about its author, then we know even less about the publication history of the Zhenla fengtu ji itself, save that the book must have been circulating in some form by at least 1312, as it is referred to in Wu Qiuyan’s 吾邱衍 Zhusushan fang ji 竹素山房集, published in that year (41 n.17).

Zhou’s account was eventually included in the monumental Siku quanshu 四庫全書 collection initiated by the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor (Gaozong 高宗; r. 1736-96) in 1772, but the fact remains that no official record of the mission to Cambodia exists in any of the traditional Chinese sources. That omission links Zhou (and Harris) to another traveller of the Yuan era, Marco Polo, whose A Description of the World, a far lengthier but also far more problematic source of the history of the Yuan world, was revised and edited by Harris in a new edition published in 2008. **

Marco Polo, 1254-1324

In contrast to Polo, Harris notes, Zhou Daguan ‘gives us the impression he can be relied upon’ (2), and ‘seems to be scrupulous about indicating whether he is reporting something first- or second-hand’ (23). This is particularly evident in the section entitled ‘The Three Doctrines,’ in which Zhou describes details such as dress, but admits ignorance in other respects (‘I don’t know what the source of their beliefs is, 53).

The period during which Zhou visited Cambodia at the very end of the thirteenth century marks something of a turning point in the history of Angkor civilisation. It would be over a century before Yasodharapura was finally sacked by Siamese troops and the capital moved to the south of the country, but it is clear from what little we know that the massive construction projects that characterised the reigns of Angkor’s thirteenth-century rulers were missing from the following century (14-17). Zhou notes at one point that ‘as a result of repeated wars with the Siamese the land [surrounding the capital] has been completely laid to waste’ (79), an offhand remark that reads quite portentously to those of us who know how the story ends.

Harris notes that scholars such as Michael Vickery warn against assigning too much authority to Chinese and Sanskrit sources when assessing Angkor civilisation, and he judiciously draws attention to Zhou’s natural prejudices and assumptions (27). One obvious deficiency in the text (apart from its incompleteness) is that not a single Cambodian is referred to by name, and we simply know far too little about the publication history of the account to be able to speculate as to whether these were subsequently removed, or indeed, ever there at all.

But I would argue that – and as an historian of China I am quite prepared to declare my bias here – while the book provides just a glimpse of late-thirteenth century Angkor, it can tell us quite a lot more about China under Yuan rule, a period that as it stands is not particularly well served in terms of traditional source material. The fact that the people of Cambodia do not know how to make soy sauce (75) is probably of very little interest to an historian of Angkor, but the fact that a young Chinese deemed this worthy of note does at least tell us something, however trivial, about culinary practice under the Yuan.

More usefully perhaps, the observations Zhou makes regarding interregional trade, or his advice that ‘when a Chinese goes to this country, the first thing he must do is take in a woman, partly with a view to profiting from her trading abilities’ (70), can contribute much to our understanding of Chinese migration history.

Now brought back to life in Peter Harris’ outstanding new English edition, Zhou’s Record of Cambodia will no doubt find its way into the hands of a new generation of historians and anthropologists, but it should also appeal more generally to anyone interested in a fascinating civilisation about which we know so little.

* ‘Cloth from the Western Seas’ 西洋 is probably a reference to buckram from India, althoughit may also have come from somewhere on the Malaysian peninsular. Some commentators prefer to read the 布 here as 絲布 (i.e. silk). See Xia ed., Zhenla fengtu ji jiaozhu, pp. 87-88.

** The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). This new edition was recently reviewed in the pages of this journal by Duncan Campbell.

© Copyright 2010 New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies (NZJAS). This review originally appeared in the NZJAS journal and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor.

About the Reviewer

Dr. Stephen McDowall, is a Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Warwick.

His research interests include late-imperial Chinese history and literature, the literature of travel, China in the Western imagination, early modern global connections and Ming material & visual culture.  His new book, Qian Qianyi’s Reflections on Yellow Mountain: Traces of a Late-Ming Hatchet and Chisel (Hong Kong University Press, 2009), examines the fascinating and complex world of late-Ming literati through an analysis of the youji 游記 [travel account] genre.

At the ancient Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, an American artist discovered a special peace that she carried throughout her life…and beyond.

Angkor Wat sunrise. © Copyright Gary Ng.

By STEPHEN GOLDFARB, Alabama Heritage Magazine

IN 1926 LUCILLE SINCLAIR DOUGLASS (1878-1935) visited the ancient Cambodian ruins at Angkor for the first time. That December the forty-eight-year-old artist wrote to her friend Leona Caldwell of her first impressions of this far-off and exotic place:

“Angkor is one of the really great experiences of my life-a more intellectual than emotional experience — not that it left me cold, quite the contrary — but it was more of an uplift — an inspiration.

“Our stay — longer than most tourists — was all too short — Angkor Wat alone requires years of study — living with understanding — a few days seems but a mockery.

“I have never had a place affect me so peculiarly. . . . I shall go back for a time as long as I can stand it and do further study on the spot.

“You see the ruins are set in the midst of the jungle — which held them in its clutches for so many centuries that it still seems jealous of them.”

Douglass described the Angkor climate as “the most trying [that] I have ever encountered … [with its] great humidity and high temperatures — an oppressive heaviness which brought all the moisture to the surface [of one's skin] and left you exhausted with the slightest effort.” And this complaint comes from a woman who grew up in central Alabama.

Douglass rendered Angkor Wat's western entrance in 1927 in this 10 7/8" x 14 1/2" etching. Courtesy US Library of Congress.

But Douglass did return the very next year.

She spent five months there with the purpose of rendering the temples and other ruins in etchings, which could capture their grandeur and intricacy in a way that photography could not. These etchings were first exhibited in April 1928 in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the French ambassador, and then at the French Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931. The story of just how Douglass made her way from the Black Belt of Alabama to the jungles of Cambodia is one of equal parts natural talent, hard work, and fortuitous circumstances.

LUCILLE DOUGLASS WAS BORN ON NOVEMBER 4, 1878, in Tuskegee, Alabama, the daughter of Walton Eugene Douglass (a Civil War veteran) and Mary Sinclair (Mollie) Douglass. She grew up in a large house but in the genteel poverty that characterized so much of the nineteenth-century, postbellum South.

Little is known about Douglass’s early years, except that she was a sickly child who spent a great deal of time reading, favoring books about travels to distant and exotic lands. In interviews she gave after gaining a measure of fame, Douglass singled out the all-but-forgotten travel stories of Hezekiah Butterworth — whose seventeen volumes of Zig-Zag Journeys enjoyed considerable popularity among young readers near the end of the nineteenth century — as having stimulated her yearning for adventure.

Lucille Douglass - 1896. Courtesy Birmingham Public Library, Leona Caldwell Collection.

Douglass received her A.B. (baccalaureate degree) in 1895 at the age of seventeen at Alabama Conference Female College, a forerunner of Huntingdon College, where her mother taught. Unfortunately, records do not survive to describe Douglass’s course of study, though it seems safe to assume that she continued to receive art training from her mother, a practice begun when Douglass was a child.

In 1899 Douglass moved to Birmingham, where she made a living as both an artist and an art teacher. She occupied a studio in the old Watts Building between 1901 and 1908. The 1907 city directory listed her as a “china painter.”

Years later Douglass made reference to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of roses that she painted on teacups and other crockery. The sale of this china, as well as hand-painted place cards, financed her future art training. In 1908 she banded with fellow artists Delia Dryer, Hannah Elliot, Carrie Hill, and four other female artists as founding members of the Birmingham Art Club.

Lucille Douglass in her studio with Hannah Elliot, 1907. Courtesy Birmingham Public Library, Hill Ferguson Collection.

Even before Douglass left for Europe in 1909, she sought art training beyond what was available in Birmingham. For several summers she attended the Art Students League in New York City, though there is no record with whom she studied. Between the years 1909 and 1912, she received art training in Europe.

In Paris she studied with Lucien Simon and René Menard. Of greater importance was the time she spent with Alexander Robinson. With his classes she traveled all over Europe-Holland, Spain, and Italy-and North Africa and became his assistant and an art teacher. After her first year with Robinson, she asked him for a frank evaluation of her work; his reply was indeed frank: “You have less talent than many, but you will go farther than the rest because once you undertake a thing you see it through.”

Lucille Douglass in Paris, 1911. Courtesy Birmingham Public Library, Hill Ferguson Collection.

A collection of her drawings and pastel sketches held in the Birmingham Museum of Art reflect her traditional art training, which emphasized the anatomically correct rendering of the human figure, and depict the local folkways of the places she visited. With two exhibits of her paintings displayed in Paris in 1911, she was on her way to establishing herself as an artist.

By 1913 Douglass had returned from Europe. She spent that summer with artist Isabelle Percy (who married George P. West in 1916), painting in the northern part of Percy’s home state of California.

World War I ended any further hopes of European travel and training and proved a trying time. City directories show that she kept a residence and studio in Birmingham from 1915 to 1917. Some sources claim that she took training as a nurse and worked with soldiers who were “shell shocked,” and that she herself had some kind of mental breakdown, for which she spent time recovering in Texas and California.

Her life took a fresh turn in 1920, when the forty-two-year-old Douglass accepted a position with the Methodist Missionary Society. She was employed to oversee a workshop in Shanghai in which Chinese women hand-colored an early form of photographic slide used by speakers to publicize the missionary work of the society. The job did not absorb all of her time and energy apparently, for she became first a writer and then associate editor of the weekly English-language publication, Shanghai Times, a position she held until 1924. During these years she traveled extensively in China as a member of the press. These trips were often dangerous, as China was in the midst of revolution and civil war.

While in China, Douglass became close friends with two female writers whose books she would eventually illustrate. Florence Wheelock Ayscough was born in Shanghai to missionary parents and educated in New England. She became a scholar of China and its literature, writing books about China and translating the works of early Chinese poets. Four of her books were illustrated by Douglass, the first three with ink drawings and the last with etchings.

Helen Churchill Candee

The second friend Douglass made in China was Helen Churchill Candee, who had, among other things, the distinction of surviving the 1912 sinking of the HMS Titanic. Roughly two decades apart in age, the two traveled together from November 1926 until January 1927.

This journey led them through the Far East-first to Indochina, then to Siam, and on to Java and BaIi. This adventure resulted in the 1927 publication of Candee’s book, New Journeys In Old Asia, for which Douglass executed twenty-one etchings. It was also on this journey that Douglass first visited Angkor. Candee had been there before and had published the book Angkor the Magnificent in 1924.

Angkor was the seat of the ancient Khmer empire from the ninth to the fifteenth century and was abandoned, only to be rediscovered in the 186Os by French explorers after Cambodia became part of the French overseas empire. Angkor — best known for the two complexes, Angkor Wat and the larger Angkor Thom — was the center of what is considered the most prosperous and sophisticated civilization in the history of Southeast Asia.

Angkor was not only a religious center but also the administrative center of the Khmer empire, with a vast system of reservoirs, canals, and moats-the basis of an extensive irrigation system for agriculture. Eventually the Khmers were overthrown, and the jungle reclaimed Angkor, though the ruins remained a pilgrimage site for Buddhists.

Etching of the Bayon rendered by Lucille Douglas in 1927, measuring 15 9/16" X 11 13/16". Courtesy Library of Congress.

Douglass saw more in Angkor than simply an exotic artistic subject. She gave detailed lectures on Angkor in both the United States and Europe. She also spoke on Angkor at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London, the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London), and at Oxford University, as well as many less august bodies. On January 10, 1930, she gave a talk at the National Geographic Society entitled “Angkor — A Royal Passion.” The brochure announcing the lecture gave the following description:

Knowledge of present conditions at the site of the ancient Cambodian metropolis will come to the Society through this interesting speaker, writer and artist, who will illustrate her talk with lantern slides, colored by herself, and motion pictures.

…In company with French archeologists Miss Douglass carefully examined the new excavations…. Her account will be authoritative, as well as entertaining.

For the last years of her life, Douglass made New York her home base, though she traveled frequently to Europe and occasionally visited Birmingham. From November 1928 until late spring of 1929, she was a faculty member of a “floating university.” On the ship President Wilson, Douglass taught art history, sketching, and painting to a hundred “boys and girls” of unspecified age as the ship sailed around the world.

An article in the November 6, 1928, New York Evening Post referred to Douglass as “one of America’s best known painters and etchers” and stated that the ship’s itinerary would include such exotic places as Siam, BaIi, Java, and Singapore, as well as “all the cities … on the more usual type of tour.”

In a letter to her friend, Leona Galdwell, Douglass wrote of her “floating university” experience: “I am glad … to have had the experience, though I should not care to repeat it.”

Lucille Douglas poses for a portrait in North Africa, date unknown. Courtesy Birminham Public Library Archives.

In a 1933 interview she gave to the New York World Telegram, a fifty-five-year-old Douglass reflected over her life of art and adventure:

I have made my life as I wanted it. I have given up marriage and home ties, because I know they would not be possible with my career. I am sorry not to have a home, but one must not be greedy. I have planned my life just as it is, and I am content with it.

After an illness that lasted several months Douglass died on September 26, 1935, in the home of a friend in Andover, Massachusetts.

Her remains were cremated and, in the following year, flown to Angkor where they were spread around what was described as “a magnificent mango tree.”

Under a spreading mango tree
(Encircling continuity)
There lies for all eternity
What particles survive the flame
Of one who now is but a name.

Civilizations long forgot
Left beauty in old Angkor Vat
An artist loved it well and true:
In paint and print she saved the view.
When she was called, she had one thought:
That was to lie in Angkor Vat.

What doth her Spirit — Who shall say
Where beauty reigns both night and day?
Free as air she is to roam.
With spreading mango tree for home.

Angkor Wat lotus pond sunrise. © Copyright Gary Ng.

Lucille’s Artistic Legacy

In the five years following her death there were three exhibits of Douglass’s works in New York galleries and a fourth after World War II in her adopted hometown of Birmingham.

Lucille Douglass pastel created between 1909 and 1913. Courtesy Birmingham Museum of Art. Gift of the estate of Leona Templeton Caldwell.

In January 1951 the Birmingham Historical Society and the Birmingham Art Club sponsored a retrospective of her works at the Birmingham Public Library, which brought pieces owned by museums together with those held by local collectors.

However, very little was written on Douglass over the next half-century, nor was her art exhibited. This was due no doubt to the triumph of abstraction and other modernist movements in art that made the works of Lucille Douglass seem old-fashioned.

Fortunately, there has been a renewed appreciation for her art in recent years, fueled by the current interest in female artists. The publication of Art of the New South: Women Artists of Birmingham, 1890-1950 (Birmingham Historical Society, 2004) by Vicki Leigh Ingham, which devotes an entire chapter to Lucille Douglass, is likely to be the beginning of a revival of interest in this accomplished artist and world traveler.”

About the Author

Stephen J. Goldfarb holds a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from Case Western Reserve University. In 2007-2008, he curated the exhibit entitled “Howard Cook: Drawings of Alabama” for the Mobile Museum of Art and at the Huntsville Museum of Art.

Goldfarb has written articles previously for Alabama Heritage on artists Marian Acker Macpherson and Lucille Douglass. He now serves Alabama Heritage Quarterly History Magazine as a contributing editor for the “Reading the Southern Past” column. No stranger to Southern reading tastes, Goldfarb retired from the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library in 2003. He has reviewed books for both newspapers and scholarly journals.

© Copyright 2006 University of Alabama – This article previously appeared in Alabama Heritage magazine (Summer 2006, Issue 81) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author and the University of Alabama.