Customer Reviews

Angkor Life

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I don't think that there is a logical ordering of the material written by the one eye-witness of the Khmer Empire, but Murray's book which draws heavily on that hodgepodge builds to a consideration of the base of Khmer society and art: harvests of rice and how the surplus was depleted over time.

Although there are many books of beautiful pictures of the ruins, and the intriguing mathematical/astronomical analysis of the great temple of Angkor Wat, Murray's book is the best available account of what the society that built the temples was like.

If the previous reviewer knows of some important new breaktrhoughs in understanding SOCIAL LIFE he or she should specify what it is. A book published in 1996 was presumably written in 1995, but I am not aware of any new archaeological interpretations of the Khmer Empire.

There are many superb books on Khmer art. This book looks at what life was like in the society that created the art and built ther stupendous temples. It necessarily relies heavily on the one surviving (Yüan-dynasty Chinese) account by a visitor to the Khmer Empire after its peak, but also draws on French archaeology and the author's considerable comparative knowledge of societies and religions. The book is succinct, readable, reasonably priced; although not an art book, it has interesting line drawings and photographs. It also has a comprehensive bibliography.

The Chinese description of Angkor life at the end of the thirteenth century provides fascinating and important information on this culture. Unfortunately, the author of this book presents the information in an unorganized format with no sense of what is important what is not. Piling up a bunch of details without a structure or theme does little to convey the nature of Angkor society. The book is poorly written; contradictions abound; and the abundant scholarship on Angkor is unacknowledged. Very disappointing.

If you want some good books on Angkor, try these:

Dumarçay, Jacques and Pascal Royère
2001 Cambodian Architecture, Eighth to Thirteenth Centuries. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Three, South-East Asia, vol. 12. Brill, Leiden.
Higham, Charles
2002 The Civilization of Angkor. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Jacques, Claude
1999 Angkor. Könemann, New York.
Mannikka, Eleanor
1996 Angkor Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.

When I was finally able to visit the ruins of the medieval Khmer capitals (Roluos and Angkor Thom) in 1993, there were no books other than coffeetable photography books available in America about Angkor. (Note that the books-which are not about the life of the capital empire-listed by one reviewer all postdate my book's first edition). I wrote the book that I wanted when it became possible to go to Cambodia in the mid-1990s.

The Siam Society's translation into English of the French translation of the account by Zhou Daguan, the Yuan-dynasty visitor to the Khmer capital) runs to 73 pages, of which more than half are illustrations. Zhou's account is the only eyewitness account (and I dedicated the book to his memory and that of George Coèdes who translated inscriptions on Khmer buildings into French). Zhou did NOT write about Angkor Wat (the great temple nearby, but outside the walls of the capital, Angkor Thom, as a glance at the maps in either my book or the Siam Society Zhou would show).

Besides going back to the original Chinese text of Zhou, I put the medieval Khmer kingdom in a wider perspective of cosmology, ecological destruction, and peasant exhaustion that Zhou could not have had, but that a comparative sociologist now can. The second edition of my book includes discussion of Mannikka's astronomical/numerological theses about the temple Angkor Wat. It is a contribution to the study of architecture rather than social history (and heavy both in weight and in technical prose).

The records of the Khmer Empire were written on palm leaves that long ago disintegrated, so that Zhou's account is the only one of someone who observed the empire (already in decline), and my indebtedness to it is literally upfront (in the book's dedication).

This book is based on the 13th-century Chinese document currently published as "The Customs of Cambodia." This original document contains about 85 pages of commentary and description, all concerning life in old Angkor Wat.

The author of the present book apparently decided that he could write a sort of "fantasy" based on this ONE surviving document. After he had completed his magic, he wound up with 111 pages.

The choice is yours: would you rather have the genuine, original document, or its "fantasy interpretation" by some American professor of sociology?

A completely disposable book!