That said, the value of the “apsara” or tep apsar, and by extension, their earthly counterparts, was certainly not lost amongst post-Angkorean Khmers considering the many depictions of celestial women in these paintings. Their importance can be recognized in the literature of the time as well, when Reab compares Seda to the apsara and when the latter descend with Indra's wives to help Seda deliver her child.[168]  And, despite no mentions of dance in the royal chronicles, we do know that “great numbers of women still surrounded the eighteenth-century kings Ang Ton and Chetta V.”[169]  No one would argue that these women would have been part of the kings’ harems.  And, using our logic once more, they probably did not just sit around all day doing nothing either.  That would be too costly for a kingdom mired in domestic and international struggle.  Neak Kru Sophiline shared with me an anecdote from Chheng Phon that reveals the role of the artists at this time, one that is the case before and after them, and one that mirrors the role of Indra's heavenly apsara in the Reamker: “The dancers were servants of the king.  The kings can change but the dancers still served the king.”[170]

 

In fact, the poem Lpoek Nokor authored by Neak Pang Tat carved onto the walls of Angkor Wat in 1620 CE​, provides a prime example of Khmer conceptions of heaven, and, in that, a reflection of Khmer ideals of kingship and court culture.  In his “sastra carved, along traces and trails, of Pali gatha, as from antiquity, truly so, without departure,” the poet likens Angkor to Indra’s Traitrimsa Heaven.[170a]  He uses the phrase “sros tong vong” (precious living gold) to describe the beautiful dancers of Traitrimsa as well as the human attendants surrounding Queen Daivatei, mother of Preah Ketumealea, the mythical founder of Angkor.[170b]  His poem, written as a form of prayer, invocation, and merit-making, details the richness of Indra’s court:

 

“Faintly carried in the breeze, melodious sounds rising from an ensemble, a dance of the kind by women, tep apsar re ram in offering.

 

Most exquisite radiant ones, all of beauty, kai kray without comparison, chhveal chhvat chhvay so easily without mistake.

 

Most exquisite desired ones, adorned in every accessory and jewel,​ as if precious living gold, all four most marvelous.”[170c]

 

This writing on stone, literally “hard evidence,” is uncommented upon by previous scholars of Khmer dance and dispels the myth that there are no written accounts of dance after Angkor.  It reveals the faults of relying solely on royal sources and circumstances in the construction of Khmer dance history, and ultimately the erasure of Khmer artistic, cultural, and political agency that results in that process.  It exemplifies how Khmer dance existed in the consciousness and way of life of Khmer people beyond the palace walls, in keeping with the Angkorean era and down to this very day.

 

It is important to note that the language used in Lpoek Nokor, which often employs consonance, alliteration, and rhyme, is still prevalent in Khmer speech, poetry, and dance lyrics today.  The phrase “char chol chap kap” (charge forward seizing and hacking) found in the poem can still be heard in Reamker performances, specifically describing Reab’s attack on Preah Ream.[170d]  The phrase “chap robam” (start dancing) also found in the poem,[170e] is heard in both ancient and modern works of the repertoire such as Robam Tamng Buon and Robam Tevet; the poem’s “rath neari” (jewel of a lady) can be heard in Robam Apsara, “rath pen poat” (gems snaking and encircling) in Moni Mekhala, and its “rung rith sithisak” (firm efficacious power) is close to the “roeung rith sithisak” (brilliant efficacious power) of Robam Tiyae.[170f]  Resulting from an unbroken linguistic culture and from direct inspiration and reference to old oral and written sources, these connections reflect Khmer poetry’s and dance’s connection to that of the early seventeenth century, to a poet who in turn modeled himself after the artists of antiquity. 

 

Importantly, terms such as re ram, kai kray, and chhveal chhvat can be heard in sacred dances such as Robam Tamng Buon and Moni Mekhala Ream Eyso.[170g]  Through linguistic analysis, for example Khmer chhveal chhvat to Thai chhawean chhawat as mentioned before, we know that these “words expressing feelings and descriptions . . . are difficult to translate,”[170h] conveying meaning, feeling, and power through sound, speed, and rhythm.  They were present in Khmer before being transferred into Thai by way of performance, literature, and speech, as well as other disciplines, habits, and customs.

 

King Vong Aschar, father of Preah Ketumealea for example, is described as wearing a khean (skirt) of chan floral patterns not unlike the kings of Angkor.[170i]  He receives offerings of gold and silver flowers “normally without end,”[170j] which likely has pre-Angkorean roots.[170k]  An “orchestra of horns and conches, drums and hand gongs, peat and kong​ whirring and clamoring, sralai and sampho, pin pet heard loud, with ceaseless steps, so grand” is described in his son’s procession, connecting the music to both that of the Angkor era and today.[170l]  Interestingly, the poem often describes the fresh, almost living qualities of the carvings—of the celestial women, of the mythical creatures, of “patterns rising into fruits and flowers, having transformed to fruits and flowers, becoming a human image re ram with arms extended”—which creates a striking relationship to Robam Tiyae (discussed later).[170m]

 

That said, the tep apsar are some of the most celebrated wonders of Indra’s heaven in Lpoek Nokor.  They are described as wearing sbai, braiding flowers, enjoying the pleasures of the divine garden, and “often enjoin one another, in sound and song, playing everything according to different characters.”[170n]  And, as the poem comes to a close, they and the kinnari are closely associated with dance, creating a direct relationship to both Robam Tamng Buon and the yogini-bird women of Banteay Chhmar.  The poet describes how the sculptors made:

 

“Images of kinnari too, going and leaning, re ram with their partner birds.

 

Elbows and wrists going in supple curves, with patterns guiding, hands and arms in ends and rows.

 

Made images of divine apsara ladies, excellently dressed, hands holding flowers and stems.

 

Re ram in beautiful grace, complete without fault, absolutely charming.”[170o]

   

The reality then is that dance and dancers were some of the things that made a Khmer king a king.  Traitrimsa’s human, historical counterparts then would have been valued for the entertainment, ceremonial, and political purposes of the monarch, who “presided over a series of partly brahmanical, partly Buddhist, and partly animistic ceremonies that . . . defined the boundaries of his merit and the limits of the agricultural year and were closely related to the success or failures of their harvests.”[171]  Thus, in their acts of dance, music, song, and performance, the dancers would have executed sacred works integral to securing the well-being of the land, people, and nation as their predecessors and divine models would have done.  In fact the dancer, whose body was seen as a medium between heaven and earth, would have been a most appropriate and powerful one to unite with.  And Khmer harems of the modern era, of which the dancers were a part of, were but vestiges of the nightly ritual at Phimeanakas required of past kings.

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Indeed the enduring relationship between women, palace, and dance is emphasized further in the story of Preah Ko Preah Keo, a rich critique of Khmer society and Thai aggression that attempted to make sense of Cambodia’s decline.  The story was passed on and performed orally for generations before the first-known written documention by Gustave Janneau in the 1870s.[171a]  Kao, descendant of Chao Moeung from the province of Prey Kabbas, heard a bard named Chhaim relate the tale in a ceremony and authored another written version.[171b]  In his telling, Kao describes how:

 

“It was the lucky fate of Pov Thida, to have a royal husband [Preah Keo], leading her to meet him, who stayed in the forest near the pond. It led the hearts of the seven [princesses], to conceive and desire, to go play in the clear waters, where the waterfront was level. They said to all their lady servants, “There is a great pond far away, let’s go play in it, every kind of game and distraction. The deep pond is called the Mucilinda, the pure and cool water growing flowers. Come on, hurry up all let’s go! So that we can pick water lilies in joy!” So they invited their servants in haste, poking and pinching, teasing in play. The servants sang without a care, gracefully re ram in the procession forward.”[171c]

 

Shortly before this destined encounter, Kao tells how Meanop, father of Preah Ko and Preah Keo, was taken to heaven after his death and transformed into Preah Ketumealea:

 

“Lord Indra ordered him to stay in heaven, with ladies in service and in attendance, two chief queens in adornment, on both sides right and left.  With a magnificent towered palace, filled with ladies in wait and dancing robam.  They served him every day tam chamnam, the sound of their joy heard every moment.” [171c]

 

Tam chamnam can be translated as “according to memory, custom, or tradition.”  And, through this image of dancing lady servants, the writer has connected directly to the poets and patterns of the past while demonstrating the contemporary expectations and practices of his own court.  Kao, who likely authored the text in the late nineteenth century, illuminates the living continuities even further when he describes Queen Pov Thida, after her marriage to Preah Keo, as “ksatrei srei tong vong” or a “queen, woman of precious gold,” not so unlike the celestial dancers and human maidens in Neak Pang’s Lpoek Nokor.[171d]

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It becomes difficult then to imagine a Cambodia without robam.  Available evidence reveals the way dancers continued to perform in all levels of society as they had during the time of Angkor: in the palace, at temples, in the homes of elite, and amongst the people alike.  Although civil war and strife during that period has left us with little written records, this history has survived to this day in the dancer’s body, from teacher to student, teacher to student, and by word of mouth.

 

Khmer oral accounts of artistic and historical continuity, which can so easily be negated in today’s culture of the written word, is only supported by the literature of the time and by the findings of the paintings at Angkor Wat—paintings of which my late father once alluded to during my teenage years.  I remember watching a documentary about Angkor with my family, centuries after the paintings and a decade before Tan’s rediscovery of the images, when my father said, “The temples used to be painted.”  The fact of the matter is that Khmer people, even of humble roots like my father, have carried on our history, traditions, and culture into the modern day in a largely embodied and oral fashion; these things have remained intact despite a destructive legacy of war and the methodological limitations by which people and institutions “officially” construct, erase, and break our history and that of others.

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The enduring trend has been to construct Cambodia’s people, culture, and spirit as broken and degenerate, the period after Angkor imagined as a backward wasteland by European colonials that was then transformed, sublimated, and perpetuated by modern “scholars” who sometimes do not even speak or study Khmer. In fact, an analysis of Middle Khmer language lets us know that artists of the time were known as silpi, some of whom were then specified as neak ram (dancer), neak pol (chanter), neak baeuk bot (“one who begins the song,” lead vocalist), puok chreang (“those who sing,” chorus), and neak leng (musician). These artists paid their respects to kru lakhaon during sampeah kru, haomrong, and buong suong ceremonies, in a stage and world guided by preay lakhaon (theater spirits) and the silpasastra (science of the arts). This association of artist with spirituality is emphasized further by their identification as neak sil, or as “connoisseurs of the arts, even the supernatural.” And, given the ancient way that art, religion, and magic were used as a form of spiritual technology—a heritage exemplified by the Middle Khmer word silpasay (Brahmanic [and tantric] arts of old)—one can be confident that the arts played a role in their birunasastra or “science of the rains.”[171e]

 

Beyond the dancers and musicians in the sphere of robam, the latter who played instruments and melodies recognized today, there were those who practiced native forms such as khaol, ayai, sbek, and phleng araks among others.  There were also foreign and Khmer artists who brought over and practiced imported forms such as sayam or chhayam (orchestra of long drums of Burmese origin, likely brought from Siam), kai leong (a form of Annamese theater), pa hi (form of Chinese theater), and klong khaek or skor jvea (double-headed Javanese drums).[171f]  This internationalism is not a reflection of a naïve Cambodia that lacks the ability to invent, that only knows how to absorb from the outside, from India, from Thailand, from the French, as enduring colonial attitudes have misled many to believe.  Instead it reflects Cambodia’s richness as the inheritor of Angkor’s imperial and cosmopolitan legacy, one compounded by its southward focus on trade afterwards, and the fact that art, ideas, and culture are the best at transcending obstacles of geography, community, space, and time.  Just as an example, Khmers of the Middle Period referred to their classical orchestra as both pin peat and pi phat,[171g] the presence of the latter Siamese word originally borrowed from the prior Khmero-Indic word reflecting options of styles, colorings, and approaches available to Khmer artists.    

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The denial of the continuity of Khmer dance to its pre-classical and classical roots then is actually a reflection of a colonial and imperialist mindset, one in which Henri Mouhot’s “discovery” of Angkor—or as we would say today, columbusing of Angkor—allowed for the French to assert their power by painting Khmers as a people disconnected from our past.  This is a prominent strategy in contemporary Thai nationalist policy, and one that pervades the Khmer mindset when we choose to view the post-Angkor period as a “dark age.”  The fact of the matter is that dance remained alive and present in the courts even into the modern era of Khmer dance history, marked by the reign of King Ang Duong (1841 – 1860).

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When the king arrived from the Thai court of Bangkok where he had been in exile (or held hostage), it is said that “he found classical dancing on the verge of total disappearance.”[172]  And today, King Ang Duong is often credited as being the savior of Khmer dance and culture, as well as the nation itself.  However, with closer scrutiny of this history, we will find that the prior statement was probably not the entire case.

 

First off, in subsequent examples, dancers were granted the opportunity to leave court with the death or transition of a monarch.  Any low numbers that King Ang Duong reports on his arrival may be a reflection of this custom.  Those who left would have probably contributed to the rich popular tradition that existed outside of the palace.  And when we look at things this way, we can understand how August Pavie’s account in the 1880s—only twenty years after the king’s passing—mentioned dancers at the palace, troupes of provincial governors, as well as traveling groups.[173]  It is very likely that a cycle such as this had existed for generations, one in which retired palace dancers enriched the popular sphere of dance while those in the popular sphere, with connections to the court by way of their teachers and families, were offered to the palace as well.  Very importantly, we must note that dancers serving the elite performed in a more stable environment than those of the court:

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“At the same time, it seems likely that certain continuity persisted at the capital among the bureaucratic elite who, along with the Buddhist sangha, were the curators of Cambodia’s literate traditions.  Several inscriptions at Angkor from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries record the careers of important officials whose graceful rise to responsibility contrasts sharply with the jagged sequence of events related by the chronicles.”[174]

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Secondly, and just as important, Trudy Jacobson has made note of King Ang Duong’s vested interest in negating the rule of his predecessor:

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“The Cambodian chronicles written after Ang Duong came to the throne depict Ang Mei as a lesson, bitterly learned, in the consequences of women exercising direct power in the political arena . . . Historians ascertain their information from written records; the problem, however, is that the Cambodian sources for this period were written in the courts of Ang Duong and his descendants, in whose interests it was to represent Ang Mei as an ineffectual ruler.”[175]

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Before the king’s coronation, the Khmer throne was occupied by his niece: Queen Ang Mei, who was installed by the Vietnamese.  The queen inherited her role during troubled times, one in which the Khmer nation and people came under the subjugation of Siam and Vietnam, and was constantly in danger of being subsumed by either.  The latter initiated a brutal regime to “decambodgienniser”[176] the country by destroying Theravada temples and enforcing Vietnamese clothes and language and more, so as to erase Khmer history and identity, and therefore Khmer sovereignty.[177]  Such oppressive violence resulted in a rebellion and the unpopularity of Queen Ang Mei amongst the people.

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All of this—along with her near forced marriage to a Vietnamese prince and rumors of her affair with a Vietnamese official—made the queen an easy scapegoat for the destruction and ruin Cambodia faced during this moment in time.[178]  King Ang Duong, not happy that his niece refused to abdicate the throne in his favor, made a conscious decision to devalue the contributions of Queen Ang Mei in order to assert his own authority, power, and validity to the point that “the reign of Ang Duong is a ‘golden age’ in Cambodian history.”[179]  Any mention of the dance’s near extinction by King Ang Duong then is actually a reflection of the king’s political erasure of his predecessor, one with a precursor in the destruction of Buddhist images following the reign of King Jayavarmann VII and subsequently in the Khmer Rouge’s destruction of pagodas built by King Ang Duong himself.

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At the end of the day, we know clearly that Khmer dance survived intact into the modern era because the king sought the “old teachers’ advice in purging the dances of ‘unsuitable’ material that had been added over the years,” some of which may have reflected Vietnamese influence.[180]  And, when we understand the ways in which the art form is ultimately carried by practitioners—and not the sovereigns who sponsor them—it becomes easy to see how Khmer dance can survive such a history of war, destruction, and civil strife.  In fact, anyone who thinks that Khmer dance was lost after the fall of Angkor should consider a subsequent example from history.

 

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, an estimated ninety percent of Khmer artists died of disease, starvation, execution, and malnutrition.  The remaining masters and dancers—in an environment of devastation, without the patronage of royalty, under the oppression of a second communist regime—immediately worked together to revive the artistic tradition.  Within two years, a new generation of dancers was already performing around the world.  Today, nearly forty years since they began their efforts, Khmer artists have pushed dance to new heights.

 

Given all of this, it is my firm belief that Khmer classical dance has always existed in Cambodia.  I liken my argument to a method of karuda (deduction) based on the teachings of the Jain prophet Jinendra “on whose teachings Buddhist logic rests,” expounded to Manimekhalai so that she may reason her way to the ultimate truth and reality of existence.[181]  Aravana Adigal, a Buddhist teacher, provides the heroine with an example of karuda (Khmers use the same words for "reason," "example," and "conclusion" today):

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“Given fact (paksha): There is fire on the mountain.

Reason (hetu): Because smoke can be seen.

Example (udaharana): As in a kitchen.

Particular case (upayana): It is the mountain that is smoking.

Conclusion (nigama): There is no smoke without fire.”[182] 

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From our particular place in time, we may not be able to see the fire of Khmer dance in the post-Angkor era.  But we are left with adequate smoke on temple walls, in oral stories, in the written accounts of foreigners, and more. For Khmer poets of the Middle Period demonstrated a vitality of their dance form's ancient foundation in Lpoek Nokor and in the Reamker, the latter describing "nagas, swaying with dancing movements"[183] and referencing "hand movement[s]" in their words.[184]  The two Reamker texts, carrying on Khmer "indigenizations" from the Angkor era—Agni, the god of fire rides on a rhinoceros instead of a ram—mentions: 

 

"A person of prowess . . . the divine goddess who protects the great ocean.  She is powerful and has a host of attendants thronging round and sea dragons and nagas in great numbers . . . the sea-goddess has been extremely kind to the unnumbered sea dragons; she protects them and the nagas and the fish. She is mistress of all waters, of all rivers and lakes, countless myriads of them. Creatures of all regions and thoroughfares have lived together quite happily, maintained by the goddess, their patron."[185]

 

This universal reverence of Moni Mekhala clearly echoes her power and descriptions in the Manimekhalai, and therefore point to a continuous tradition of worship.  The Khmer poets demonstrated their long-standing understanding of the goddess in the story of the buffalo Dubhi, whose "two horns were like pikes, pointed like the mighty weapon of Isur."  He attacked the ocean causing "reverberat[ions] like thunder through all the ten directions" and Mekhala "tricked" him "into a mood of ignorant confidence" to eventually challenge and be killed by Peali.[186]  In this literary work that has always used frame tales to contrast and foil characters and narratives, one must wonder about Dubhi's relationship to Ramaparamasur, Paramasur, Ramesur—who we know today as Ream Eyso.  Regardless, a case can be made that tantric resonances of Moni Mekhala Ream Eyso were still palpable in post-Angkor Cambodia, when the poets likened Seda running away from Preah Ream to "Mekhalla when she tantalises Ramesur in the heavens."[187]  Interestingly, this gives the sea goddess a direct relationship to the apsara of Lpoek Nokor, those “bavar vora chuop chap” of the poem—translated above as “most exiquiste desired ones”—more literally meaning “exquisite blessed ones to be caught on encounter.”[187a] 

 

With all of this, the fire of Khmer classical dance grows undeniably clear.  And it has burned since it was first lit, continuing to burn in our dancing hearts and bodies today.

 

We should note that King Ang Duong merely redefined the artistic tradition in a manner that is more recognizable to people of our time.  First off, he separated male and female dancers into separate troupes and commanded that they each be able to enact dances and dramas without depending on each other.[188]  This has resulted in the modern female tradition we associate with the royal court today and the modern all-male masked tradition of khaol, which is associated with villages and only performs excerpts of the Reamker.  Secondly, he covered the half-clad bodies of the dancers with heavy costumes.  This decision reflected an interaction with “modern” French values as well as the conservative ideas of the Thammayut branch of Theravada Buddhism, which was developed by both Thai and Khmer monks in Bangkok.[189]

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Some believe that this new costuming was an imitation of the Siamese court[190] while others have said, “It’s not Thai.  It’s Buddhist.”[191]  Given how misunderstandings of the dancing images of Angkor have caused some contemporary scholars and others to deem Khmer dance a “broken tradition”—an erroneous mindset of: dancers only strike one pose in the reliefs so that is probably all that they did, there are no written records of dance or music after Angkor so it did not exist—we must now analyze the stark differences in costumes displayed by relief carvings and those worn by dancers today to further establish Khmer dance’s linkages to its native roots.

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