fortified against foreign invasion and internal revolt by the energetic measures taken by his predecessors Aurelian and Probus. His objects were first to give the imperium itself increased stability, and secondly to reorganize the administration throughout the whole Empire. To the first intention belongs his famous plan to set up two emperors or augusti, each assisted by a caesar, he himself retaining the supreme responsibility. Indeed he brought autocracy to the highest peak, and surrounded himself with all the pomp and symbolism of Oriental divine monarchy. But his plan was severely practical, designed to reduce the tremendous burdens of government while maintaining essential unity. At the same time it was intended to reduce the now chronic risk of disputed successions by nominating the two caesars as augusti-designate. Equally practical was his levelling policy, designed to reduce Rome and Italy to the status of the provinces: this was made easy by the fact that since the beginning of the century Roman citizenship had ceased to be a minority privilege. The change enabled him to introduce a uniform administrative system throughout the whole Empire, with a continuous pyramid of authority descending from the emperor in his palace to the lowest official in the remotest corner of the Empire. It is generally agreed that these reforms, for the time being, halted the decline of the Empire, enabling the central authority to make full use of all resources; but already in his lifetime, after his abdication, Diocletian was to see the failure of his hopes. This resulted from the quarelling of his successors, while the four imperial courts strained even further the overburdened financi system. The huge bureaucracy which he had created, and which certainly did yeoman service, was during the coming century to strain the imperial finances to the breaking point. Diocletian was a Dalmatian of humble birth, who had risen through service in the army under Aurelian, and his capacity as a soldier was only thrown into the shade by his extreme brilliance as a statesman. His exaltation of the divine nature of the emperor was actuated by the very practial consideration that, in view of the extreme liability of the ruler to be assasinated, he wished to withdraw his person from ordinary contacts and hedge it around with an inviolable screen of religious sanctity. "The imperial office must be reinterpreted and reestablished as the centre of the national life. Neglect of the gods had brought down their displeasure, attested by many a national disaster. Rome must return to that reverence for the divine which had made her great."' By Rome, it must be understood, was now meant the whole Empire. Thus Jupiter and Hercules were the divinities with whom the two augusti now identified themselves; but Diocletian did not disdain to incorporate some of the mysterious awe associated with the grandeur of of royalty of his defeated enemy Persia, especially as this had arrived at means of avoiding assasination by the bodyguard. Now we come to the interesting question of Diocletian's relations with the Christians. Recovered from the repression of the emperors Decius and Valerian, these were now too well organized as a "State within a State" to be ignored. Their treatment undoubtedly posed him a crucial problem, anxious as he was to restore the State within the framework of a revived Roman religion. The Church was growing more militant, and was regarding the gods that had made Rome great as though they were mere evil demons. That Diocletian was responsible for initiating the great persecution is a supposition that has done much to tarnish his reputation as an otherwise able administrator. But persecution is not in accordance with the tolerance usually accorded by the supporters of Roman paganism to foreign cults, and Mithraism and other eastern religions were flourishing in the Empire at this time. There is much reason to believe that the decision to persecute the Christians was forced upon Diocletian by the intolerant Caesar Galerius, whose influence had been greatly increased by his recent victory over the Persians. Diocletian yielded to Galerius' aggressive insistence, and his efforts to prevent actual bloodshed proved http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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ineffective. But he soon realized that the results to be obtained were not in accordance with those that he had come to expect from the exercise of normal statesmanship. It had always been envisaged in his master-plan that he and his co-augustus were in due course to make way for the two caesars. However this does not explain why Diocletian in fact abdicated so early, retiring to his palace at Salonae (Split) in 305 to grow vegetables, after a temporary breakdown in health. The reason seems to be that Galerius "had forced on Diocletian the dangerous step of persecuting the Christian Church, and had set up internal conflicts in his mind which must have contributed to his collapse in 304". In his plan to base his restoration on a renomination of the Roman State religion, Diocletian was not actuated by any romantic passion for the past. He lacked romantic qualities and was intensely practical. He wished to weld all the diverse elements of the Empire into a Roman unity, even though his idea of Roman-ness had an Illyrian stamp. So, despite his reforms, his government had an essentially conservative bias. His outlook had been so broadened by his travels throughout the Empire that he had acquired sufficient tolerance to regard, in all probability, Jupiter Optimus Maximus as just one manifestation of a supreme world deity. It really seems as though, had not the condition of the Empire changed so greatly since Augustus' day, Diocletian might have found the correct answer to the situation: by an extension of very similar methods to those that had proved so successful in the hands of the first princeps. It was not such figure-heads as Jupiter and Hercules that offered a barrier to the adjustment of the State religion to new ideas. It has been well said that "it was under the concept of Genius, in his various aspects, that paganism fought its decisive battle with Christianity. 'Genius Populi Romani', 'Genius Imperatoris', 'Genius August?, - these are the types that fill the token coinage which passed through all men's hands. It was the creative spirit, immanent in ruler and people, that was set against the spirit of Christ, working through the Church".' But the Roman citizenship had now been so freely accorded that it is not surprising if what it had originally stood for, in terms of duty to family and State, were no longer well appreciated. Diocletian, loath to persecute, may have been racked by his inability to hit on a means of reconciling the ancient faith with a religion whose spread he probably came to realize could never be effectively repressed. It remained for Constantine, uniting the Empire in 3z3 under his own control after eighteen years of strife, during which he had eliminated the other augusti, to make a noble effort to complete the reforms of Diocletian where they had most signally failed - on the religious side. He combined a gift of organization with his soldierly ability; he was young and had the advantage over Diocletian that he was much more ready to consider a solution that would give due weight to new forces. “ When once the failure of the persecution had been avowed, a toleration granted by express enactment was the natural result of the situation thus created: what could not have been expected was the profession by a Roman emperor of the Christian faith.” It was this conversion that made it easy to make a change in the concept of the monarchy, more especially as the Persian conception of royal power as a trust from God had become familiar at the Roman court. And this idea of divine favour still made it possible for Christian emperors to maintain the traditional ceremonial as a support to their sanctity. They remained autocratic it is true, as indeed the peoples of the Eastern Empire wished them to be, yet the Church could impose certain checks. Further, the Senate had a revived power both as a consultative body and in the election of an emperor, which it had completely lost at Rome under the principate. In thus formulating a theory of Christian sovereignty which could be accepted by all his subjects, Constantine undoubtedly laid the http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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basis for the political thought of the new Roman Empire of Byzantium; and he made possible the co-operation of Church and State in the Christian kingdoms that were as yet unborn. This was his great contribution to the future Western civilization; but, as we shall see presently, there was still something needed for the strengthening of the Roman State which Augustus in somewhat similar circumstances had been able to do. The impossibility of finding the correct formula at this late juncture in Roman history, was yet to make of Christianity a powerful factor in the disruption of the Western Roman Empire. Parallel trends in thirteenth-fourteenth century Kambuja now claim our attention. Since Jayavarman VII was not followed by warlike monarchs comparable to the Roman soldieremperors, it is not surprising to find that under his weak successors there was considerable loss of outlying territory. The voluntary evacuation of Champa, it is true, might be compared to the Roman withdrawal in the third century from Dacia, for once the Chams no longer constituted a menace it was not thought worth the trouble of governing such an alien people. just after the death of Jayavarman, in 1216 and 1 2 18 to be exact, the combined forces of Khmers and Chams had suffered reverses against Annam. No doubt it was then thought to be an act of wise statesmanship magnanimously to place a native ruler on the Charn throne, and so establish a buffer state to deal with Annam. In fact there were no more wars between the Khmers and Chains. Though the latter were not above raiding the Mekong delta when occasion offered, they were generally fully occupied with their Annamite neighbours who would in course of time compass their ruin. More serious for the Khmers was the loss of the Menam valley and the northern part of the Malay Peninsula, together constituting most of what is now Siam, although all this region consisted mainly of vassal states with a non-Khmer though partly Khmerized population. The Tai, from their original homeland in South China, had for some time been coming down the great Indochinese rivers and settling in the fertile Menam. valley region of the Khmer Empire. We have already noticed that by the middle of the twelfth century they were serving as auxiliary forces in the Khmer army. They had set up little states under their own chiefs, but under Khmer suzerainty, and had served under Khmer generals in the fighting against Annam. Now the opportunity appeared to have come for them to assert their independence. It was towards the middle of the thirteenth century that two Tai chiefs attacked and defeated the Khmer governor of Sukhodaya, and proclaimed independence. The son of one of them, Rama Khamheng, famous in Siamese history completed the conquest of what is now Siam (Thailand), far down into the Malay Peninsula, and even including the Tenasserim coast. To appreciate the power behind these Tai conquests we have to remember that they were largely made possible as a direct result of the Mongol conquest of the Tai-populated kingdom of Nanchao (Yunnan), carried out by Kublai Khan in 125 3-4. It was largely from the Tai refugees from the fury of the Mongol army that Sukhodaya obtained a steady stream of recruits. All this happened in the reign of jayavarman VIII, who came to the throne at Angkor about I 243 and was to reign for more than half a century. It is doubtful whether the Khmers suffered much more from the loss of this territory than did the Romans who, during the corresponding period, managed to keep their frontiers intact, by dint of much exhausting and costly defensive warfare. One advantage the Khmer rulers appear to have had is that reigns were longer and successions, if not always regular, at least accompanied by a minimum of disturbance. jayavarman VIII maintained the religion of the Devaraja though this was once more in the traditional Saivite form; Mahayana Buddhism had been displaced shortly after the death of jayavarman VII, not without some violence, it would appear from the damage done to the monuments of the Bayon school. The people found

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time for a lively popular art: the few surviving reliefs show a naturalistic portrayal of familiar scenes that has been compared with the art of the Elder Breughel. One of the last things jayavarman VIII did in the course of his long and generally unprogressive reign was to build a small Siva temple dedicated to the "Prince of Professors". This was in 1295, and it was the last temple of any note built at Angkor. It is abundantly clear that, though there were still skilled craftsmen, there was no longer money nor the available labour to undertake any great funerary monuments of the templemountain type. The dedication of this last temple is unusual, and it was situated in the north-eastem part of the city, which appears to have become a university quarter. It would seem that an age of scholarship had made its appearance in court circles: "Sanskrit verse was still written. Wise men abounded there and foreign savants came, drawn by the reputation of this kingdom of high culture. Nowhere was knowledge more in honour. Scholars occupied the first charges of the State; they were on terms of familiarity with kings."' The Khmers were exhausted with the efforts to resist the encroachments of the barbarians, while they still had to maintain the service of the monuments, now rendered burdensome by the loss of revenues. So the ruler and his court closed their eyes to losses of territory and the defeat of their arms, and gave their attention to intellectual pursuits. One is indeed reminded of the propensities of the Roman emperor Gallienus, who surrounded himself with philosophers and wrote poetry, just when affairs of State were going from bad to worse. In both cases the stress of similar circumstances seems to have suggested a similar escape. This attitude of mind was made possible because Kambuja proper, like Italy in the reign of Gallienus, was still relatively secure. The Khmer civilization was static rather than decadent as yet. Chou Ta-kuan, the Chinese ambassador who visited Angkor in 1296-7, and left a valuable account of what he saw, ives the impression of a capital city still wealthy and magnificent. However it must be said that some of the appearance of animation and prosperity that enlivened the capital at the time of Chou's visit was undoubtedly due to a recent change of regime: the accession of a ruler whom we may regard as the Khmer Diocletian, in the person of Indravarman 111. That there should have emerged such a ruler, just at this moment, is perhaps not so very surprising: would it not be expected that conditions so similar to those of third-century Rome, when the State was slipping towards the abyss, might produce a comparable effort at restoration? Chou Ta-kuan mentions that the Empire had recently come under the rule of a vigorous young man, who was a soldier. A panegyric of Indravarman 111, contained in an inscription, fully bears out Chou's statement. It says - "If the land, sustained by an ancient king, experienced ordinarily the inconvenience of a superabundance of enemies, now, guarded by a young king, it does not experience the least inconvenience." Indravarman appears to have repelled Tai encroachments on Kambuja proper, and also to have reorganized the administration of the country, although details are not known to us. Chou further tells us that, whereas the old monarch had not dared to venture out of his palace, the new one went out several times during the year Chou spent at Angkor, although he was always protected by a suit of mail. What particularly was the internal danger that the old ruler had so feared, and even the new and vigorous one had constantly to guard against? Whether or not Indravarman had his personal enemies, there was undoubtedly unrest among the populace, particularly the slaves dedicated to the great temples, the families whose sons were conscripted for the unending warfare, the traders and peasants who bore the brunt of the heavy taxation and levies in kind. It was just among such people that http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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Hinayana Buddhism, an ideal religion for oppressed masses, would make most appeal; and we know that the Hinayana had been introduced into Kambuja as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. It is unlikely that it was the Tai who were responsible for proselytizing the Khmers, for though vigorous the Tai were still culturally backward, only just being converted themselves. The probability is that the main source was the Louvo (Lopburi) region of the lower Menam valley, peopled by Môn who had been Hinayanists for centuries. Since this region had become part of the Khmer Empire about A.D. 1000, the Môn had become partly Khmerized, but the Khmers who went to live there were often influenced by the local Buddhist religion. We know that by the end of the thirteenth century some of these Khmer residents had become monks, and a few had even been on a pilgrimage to Ceylon. It seems likely that it was these Khmer monks and Khmerized Môn from Louvo who had been most active in spreading the gospel of Hinayana Buddhism in Kambuja. Chou Ta-kuan, while describing the Brahmans of the Royal God religion, and also apparently a sect of Saivites, gives the impression that at the time of his visit the Hinayinists were the most in evidence. He describes the Buddhist monks and their practices with unmistakable clarity. The rapid development of this popular, personal religion must have caused Indravarman serious concern. There can be no suggestion that persecution or repression ever crossed his mind. Throughout their history the Khmers had always been tolerant of Indian religions, even though an individual monarch sometimes dealt harshly with a new aspect of the Devaraja cult that his predecessor had seen fit to introduce. There is good reason to believe that Indravarman maintained the Royal God cult under the aspect of Siva; and we know from an inscription that he bestowed valuable gifts on the temple of the “Prince of Professors.” Despite this official conservatism, Indravarman was certainly tolerant of Buddhism, for we know that in 13o8 he gave a village to a Hinayanist abbot; and the next year, after he had abdicated, he gave the abbot four villages for the upkeep of his monastery. Some have suggested that this means that the reason for his abdication, when he was still young, was that he wished to become a Buddhist monk, and that he did so either in this monastery or in another one. A point that might be taken to support this suggestion is that when the king left the palace he usually went to see a golden Buddha in front of a little golden pagoda. If he did indeed abdicate to enter a monastery, the decision can only have been a purely personal one, offering an escape from a situation of intense mental conflict I am doubtful that he came to any such definite decision. What has been the action of the most famous rulers who have been converted to Buddhism? Asoka in India, Devanampaya Tissa in Ceylon, Anuruddha of Burma, Rama Khamheng of Sukhodaya, all continued to reign and did their utmost actively to further the spread of the religion in their dominion. We have enough evidence to know that Indravarman was mainly concerned with the effort to restore the Empire on conservative lines, and this included the maintenance of the Devaraja religion. One might have supposed that it would not have been impossible to devise a means whereby the Hinayana Buddhism could have been adapted to the Royal God cult, with the moral essence of the Buddhist dharma identified with the good of the State, manifesting in the king, regarded now as a Bodhisattva. But these were not the days of jayavarman II. It was the populace, tired of the exacting service to the State religion in any shape or form, who were deciding on the nature of the religion that would best suit them as individuals, without asking the co-operation of the court. Such a plan of adaptation may well have been entertained by Indravarman when he enquired into the Buddhist religion; but nothing effective could have been done without the support of the people. So all that came of his http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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cogitations, in so far as the State was concerned, was that he abdicated, leaving the State religion unaltered. There is no reason why we should expect him to have combined the essentially conservative role of a Diocletian with the revolutionary one of a Constantine. The above interpretation is borne out by the fact that Indravarman was succeeded quite regularly by the yuvaraja (crown prince), who maintained the State religion. After a reign of nineteen years he was succeeded in 1327, again it would appear to have been quite regularly, by jayavarman Paramesvara or jayavarman IX - and it is he who is the Khmer Constantine. His reign seems to have been quite long, although we have no certain information of its duration. As his full name implies, he began as a strict adherent to the Dvaraja in the aspect of Siva. The lengthy so-called "inscription of Angkor Wat", actually found some distance from it, speaks of the new monarch "having,torn out (like a bristle) the city of his enemy", so he seems to have begun with a military success of some sort. This inscription is the last important Sanskrit text of Kambuja. It is couched in conventional Sanskrit verse, with little if any falling off in style or content, for it shows a thorough knowledge of Indian literature and religions. That the curtain was now rung down on Sanskrit epigraphy is not due to any inability on the part of the Khmer Brahmans, but simply to the great event to which we now come: the conversion of the ruler to Hinayana Buddhism, the sacred religion of which is of course Pali. This conversion strikes one as surprising as the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and we recall the words of the historian: "what could not have been expected was the profession by a Roman emperor of the Christian faith." It is indeed of special interest when we find both Khmers and Romans responding in the same way, a way which would not be expected of them. It suggests anew the need for comparative investigations. So if we had fuller knowledge, what at first sight seems so surprising, might be recognized as perhaps inevitable in the circumstances. We do not know the exact date of Jayavarman's conversion, which meant that now all obstacles had been removed to the conversion of the entire population. However the Brahmans still had a role at court in connection with certain ceremonies, and were indeed indispensable because of their knowledge of the law and the administration of justice. What is most striking is that Jayavarman now proceeded to act in just the way that might be expected of a newly converted Buddhist (or Christian) ruler, zealously spreading the gospel not only in his own territory but in that of his neighbours. This concerns particularly the new kingdom of Laos, which came into existence about 1350 in the northern part of the Mekong valley, with the encouragement of Kambuja. The Lao people were of Tai stock, and they had previously been under the rule of the Tai of Sukhodaya, who had built up their power at the expense of the Khmer Empire. Now it so happens that, as we know from the chronicles of Laos, the son of a Lao chief had taken refuge at Angkor as long ago as 1316 bringing with him his infant son Fa Ngom. The latter was brought up at the Khmer court by a Hinayanist monk. In course of time Fa Ngom married a daughter of Jayavarman; but despite all this influence he does not appear as yet to have become a Buddhist, and no doubt he still continued to profess the simple animism of his forebears. Sometime before 1350 Jayavarman, seeing that the Sukhodaya kingdom was not as strong as formerly, seized the opportunity of weakening his adversary by sending Fa Gnom with a force of 10,000 men to try and conquer the Lao country. Fa Ngom was successful, set himself up as an independent Lao ruler, and secured the allegiance of many petty chieftains in the valley. This was the beginning of Lao independence: and in the now declining state of the Khmer Empire, it was as far as any Khmer ruler could hope to go towards reestablishing his influence in the north. But it is not the end of the story: there is a sequel which brought an achievement that must have now been nearer to http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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Jayavarman's heart than any material conquests. However resistant to Buddhism Fa Ngom may have been in his youth, his queen was a Khmer Buddhist, and through her Jayavarman retained considerable influence in the new kingdom he had helped to found. The queen did her utmost to convert the Lao people. However, very shortly after the coronation, the people began to complain of the severity of Fa Ngom's rule. When the news reached Angkor, Jayavarman invited his son-in-law to come and see him; he remonstrated with him and pressed him to follow the precepts of the Lord Buddha. Thus cajoled by father-in-law and wife, Fa Ngom was finally converted to Buddhism and asked for monks and sacred books to be sent to Laos. A commission was sent and the whole country was converted. At the head of the commission was Fa Ngom's old tutor, and they took with them the famous Buddha image, the Great Prabang, after which the royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang, is named to this day. In trying now to determine the effect of the conversion to Christianity or Hinayana Buddhism on the fate of the Roman and Khmer Empires, I shall begin by quoting what may be considered to be the established views of historians. Only then shall I try to arrive at what I believe to be a more just appreciation in terms of culture change, for that is essentially the nature of a change of religion. Gibbon's views, as expressed at the end of his fourth volume of the Decline and Fall are so well known that a short excerpt will suffice: "As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged: and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister ...... More comprehensive are the considered views of that distinguished cultural anthropolozist of the old school, Sir James Frazer, who, while admitting that misgovern ment and a ruinous fiscal system were also factors in the decline of the Roman Empire, wrote in strong terms of the influence of "Oriental" religion as follows: "Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the State; it set the safety of the commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in a world to come. Trained from infancy in this unselfish ideal, the citizens devoted their lives to the public service and were ready to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank from the supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the interests of their country. All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects worth living for, objects in comparison with which the prosperity and even the existence of the State sank into insignificance. The inevitable result of this selfish arid immoral doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A general disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the State and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is only possible through the active co-operation of the citizens and their http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common good. Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them. This obsession lasted for a thousand years. Hinayana Buddhism has much in common with early Christianity in its concentration on the improvement of the individual's lot in a future sphere, and its removal from the service of the State of a large proportion of the able-bodied male population who as monks depend on the charity of the rest. Of the coming of Hinayanism to Kambuja, Briggs writes: "Perhaps the most disastrous invasion of Kambuja was the peaceful penetration of the advance-guard Hinayanist bonzes during the latter half of the thirteenth century", and again he says that "already the forces of destruction were at work on the inside a true 'fifth column', under the form of Hinaydnist bonzes ……” He concludes that one “ great cause of the decline of this type of culture was the conversion of the people and their rulers to Hinayana Buddhism.” If we look at the introduction of a new religion, as I think we ought to, in the framework of culture change, we must surely recognize that there is truth in the historians' conclusions as to the destructive effect that can be wrought by personal religion on the body politic, even if the moral standard is as high as that of Christianity or Hinaydnsim; yet this does not get to the root of the matter or place the main responsibility where it belongs. The Christian and Hinayana Buddhist religions are primarily to be seen as waves of cultural influence, such as Rome and Angkor had both experienced and known how to deal with in earlier centuries. Unless one accepts the theory of Emile Durkheim that God is in origin nothing but society deified, a theory that has been rejected by virtually all students of comparative religion, it will be obvious that a civilization will usually have to face a new religion as an outcome of individual experience - and then adapt it to the needs of society. We have seen that Tantrism and Dionysus worship both made a strong appeal to the individual, and at first went a good way towards undermining the established basis of the State. Even had their moral standards been generally higher their appeal to the individual would still have endangered the State. But both at Rome and Angkor, the influential sections of the public appreciated the danger. They gave the fullest support to their leaders in their efforts to control these religious movements, or to modify them in such manner as to make them serve the State. In terms of culture change, the later Greek and Indian stimuli, like the earlier ones, were in part rejected, in part moulded by local genius. And it holds good today that a civilization, if it is to survive, must know how to shape in terms of its own local genius what it borrows from foreign religion, ideology or technology. In a significant passage, that I quoted earlier in this chapter, it was remarked that it was under the concept of Genius that the decisive battle was fought between paganism and Christianity; or we might equally say that it was under the concept of the Devariaja that the battle was fought between the Khmer State religion and Hinayana Buddhism. The battle was lost by the local civilization because local genius was no longer able to mould the new religious pattern in such way that it would strengthen not undermine the existing State religion. Neither Christianity nor Hinaydnism could ever have proved destructive had not the jaded ethos of the civilizations concerned, and the now outwornofficial cults, proved unequal to making the necessary adjustments and continuing the evolution on the old basis. The harmony between man and gods had been upset by the burdensome upkeep of an accumulation of temples and, in the case of Rome, of the increased number and luxury of the imperial courts. But we must give equal importance to the effects of the exhausting wars which drew much needed manpower away from agriculture and essential irrigation. http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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All such deteriorating conditions led to the undermining of faith in the established social order, and encouraged men to hearken to the teachings of a religion which offered escape for the hard-pressed individual. During the fourth century Rome had sufficiently profited from the reforms of Diocletian, and by the military efforts of Constantine, Julian and Valentinian, who sought to emulate Diocletian's example, for the frontiers to be held against barbarian inroads. But internally there was every sign of impending disaster: “From all the writers who deal with the fourth century comes the same tale of declining strength and energy. From Lactantius to Zosimus we have one long series of laments over the depression and misery of the provinces. To meet the increased expenditure necessary to maintain the legions, to pay the host of officials, and to keep up the luxurious splendour of the imperial courts, not only were the taxes raised in amount, but the most oppressive and in sitorial methods were adopted in order to secure for the imperial treasury every penny that could be wrung from the wretched taxpayer. The results are seen in such pictures as that which the panegyrist Eumenius draws of the state of Gaul (3o6-312 A.D.) under Constantine, in the accounts of the same province under Julian fifty years later, in those given by Zosimus early in the fifth century, and in the stringent regulations of the Theodosian code, dealing with the assessment and collection of taxes. Among the graver symptoms of economic ruin were the decrease of population, which seriously diminished not only the number of taxpayers ' but the supply of soldiers for the legions; the spread of infanticide; the increase of waste lands whose owners and cultivators had fled to escape the tax collector; the declining prosperity of the towns; and the constantly recurring riots and insurrections, both among starving peasants, as in Gaul, and in populous cities like Antioch. The distress was aggravated by the civil wars, by the rapacity of tyrants, such as Maxentius and Maximus, but above all by the raids of the barbarians, who seized every opportunity afforded by the dissensions or incapacity of the emperors to cross the frontiers and harry the lands of the provincials" From the oint of view of the ordinary citizen, it may be added, the demands of taxation were certainly no less from the time of Constantine onwards, even though subjection could be masked by interpretation as resignation to the will of God. We have seen that the Khmer Empire, unlike Rome in the corresponding period, lost its western territories in the thirteenth century. Now we come to a circumstance that may lead one to realize that this difference is more apparent than real: while still within the Roman Empire, Gaul and the provinces south of the Danube had been so infiltrated by barbarians that it would be the work of a moment for them to throw off the yoke, just as effectively as did the Tai chieftains of Sukhodaya. The settlement of barbarians within these territories had not only been graciously allowed in earlier reigns, but systematically fostered by the Illyrian emperors during the third century; and in the fourth these newcomers were far from forming a servile class. They not only made up a large part of the forces but had advanced to high positions in the imperial service, some having places close to the imperial person. As in the case of Angkor, so at Rome, the attacks which were to bring about the fall of the capital, came from peoples, partly Christian or Hinaydnist, whose power was, or had until recently been, situated within the confines of the Empire. There was owing to this religious bond a certain element of sympathy between the victors and the vanquished which had a bearing on the degree to which the monuments of each capital were damaged, and on the future treatment of the defeated. It was in 376 that the Goths, under pressure from the Huns to the eastward, had been obliged to seek shelter in the Roman Empire. A hundred years later the Huns under Attila http://amekhmer.free.fr 2001-2005

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were threatening Italy. The terrible fate that would have overcome Roman civilization at the hands of these savage heathens was only warded off by the fact that the Christian and half-Romanized Visigoths of Gaul rallied to the defence of the Empire against their common enemy. The Mongols under Kublai Khan can be compared to the Huns in regard to South-east Asia. Although these barbarous conquerors had never actually threatened Kambuja, it will be remembered that it was their conquest of Nanchao that set the Tai in motion into the Khmer Empire. Kublai Khan's efforts to subdue Java and Champa were unsuccessful, but from the way in which he devastated Pagan, the Burmese capital, in 1283, and opened the way for two centuries of misrule under Shan satrapies, we can see that it was better for the Khmers to be conquered by a people who had gone some distance towards becoming civilized. From the Khmer point of view, a serious development in the territory that had been lost to the Tai was the rise of the Tai kingdom of Ayudhya in the southern part of the Menam valley. This happened in the middle of the fourteenth century, and was at the expense of the Sukhodaya kingdom which after the death of Rdma Khamheng had rapidly declined under unwarlike successors. The danger from Ayudhya was firstly its comparative nearness to Angkor, making surprise attacks more easy; secondly, this area was the old Môn country which had been active in Buddhist missionary work, coupled with the spread of propaganda, among the Khmer peasantry. Nevertheless there is good reason to believe, from the accounts in the Cambodian and Tai annals, that the Khmers, profiting by the improvements made by Indravarman, carried on quite a vigorous defence of their homeland during the period 13 5 0-143 0, when there was almost ceaseless warfare between the two states. Nor was the fighting purely defensive: only ten years before the final sack of Angkor the Khmers made repeated thrusts towards Ayudhya, both by the coastal route and from the north-east via the Korat plateau. It has generally been supposed that Angkor was taken for the first time by the Tai of Ayudhya in 13 5 2 but this view has been contested on good grounds by Briggs, who thinks that though it may have been attacked it was not then captured. If it was then taken, the occupation was of short duration; and this would compare with the siege and sack of Rome by Alaric and his Visigoths in 410, only for the victors to abandon it shortly afterwards. The final sack of Rome by the Vandals took place in 455, though by the goodwill of the barbarians Rome was governed by emperors deputed by them until 475. For Angkor the final act took place in 1431 when, after a seven months' siege, during which the king died, two Buddhist monks and two officials turned traitor and let the enemy in. Later the two traitor monks were honoured by the foundation near Ayudhya of a couple of monasteries. Immense booty was taken, as well as many prisoners. But Buddhist statues at least would find places of honour at Ayudhya, and the Tai king was alive to the value the captured Khmer intelligentsia would have in helping him to organize the law and administration of his young kingdom of Siam. Angkor certainly put up a better resistance than did Rome, even though this resistance was cut short by the intervention of the yellow robe. In the words of Gibbon, when the Vandals appeared before Rome, "instead of a sally of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable procession of the bishop at the head of the clergy"; and their intercession somewhat mitigated the fury of the conqueror. So in each case the new religion had all the appearance of giving the “coup de grâce.”

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A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY Briggs, L.P

The Ancien Khmer Empire, Philadelphia, 1951. The standard work on Khmer history, with full references to all source material.

Coedès G

Les Peuples de la Pininsule Indochinoise, Paris, 1962..

Groslier B. P

Angkor, London, 1957

Groslier, B. P

Indochina, London, 1962 The above two books are popular but authoritative works, lavishly illustrated.

Wales, H. G

Quaritch, The Making of Greater India, and edn., London, 1961

Bagby, Philip

Culture and History, London, 19 5 8. Bloch, R., The Origins of Rome, London, 1 960 Cambridge Ancient History, The, Vols. VII-XII, 1928-1939 Engelopaedia Britannica, XIVth edition, art. "Rome."

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Fowler, W. Warde Rome, and edn., London, 1947Hastings' Engelopaedia of Religion and Ethics, arts, "Greek Religion", "Roman Religion", "Thrace". Le Symbolisme Cosmique des Monuments Religieux (Serie Orientale Roma, 1957). Pelham, H. F

Outlines of Roman Historic, fourth edition, 1905, reprinted London, 1956.

Taylor, L. R

The Divinity of the Roman Emperor, Middletown, Conn., 1931.

ABBREVIATIONS CAH = The Cambridge Ancient History. ERE = Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

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