1873 as part of the mission report. Inscriptions showed the presence of two
diVerent languages.
The Angkor ruins impressed Delaporte to such an extent that he decided to
dedicate his life to the archaeology of the area. Importantly, he was able to take
his wish to fruition, something that would have been impossible decades before
without the framework provided by imperialism. Having obtained oYcial
permission for an expedition in Cambodia in 1873, he pursued his studies,
making further drawings and also shipping back to France originals and
moulds of the ruins and other antiquities, mainly of the Khmer period, of
both Cambodia and Siam (Thailand). He also sent rubbings of inscriptions
written in Sanskrit and Khmer for their study. The antiquities were installed in
Paris in the Trocadero in 1878, where the Muse ́e Indochinois was oYcially
founded in 1882 with Delaporte as its keeper (Boudet & Masson 1931: 51).
Some of the antiquities brought to France by Delaporte were also bought by the
Muse ́e Guimet (mentioned in Chapter 7 for its focus on Oriental antiquities).
Delaporte published his studies in a volume,Voyage au Cambodge, in 1880
(Malleret 1969: 44–5).
The documentation gathered by Delaporte allowed other scholars to look
into the epigraphy of the Khmer. Yet, theWrst person to deal with them was
not French, but Dutch: the Professor of Sanskrit at Leiden, Hendrik Kern
(1833–1917). He deciphered the Sanskrit-based characters of the ancient
Cambodian texts and stone inscriptions and linked them to those of southern
India. The second language identiWed in Angkor was Khmer. These identiWca-
tions linked the ruins to the question of the dispersion of languages
and peoples from India and the spread of Buddhism. The publication in
French of Kern’s results in 1879 led to a nationalistic reaction. A team of
French Sanskritists led by Auguste Barth (1834–1916) and Abel Bergaigne
(1838–88) was immediately put to work. They were helped with the Khmer
inscriptions by E ́tienne Aymonier (1844–1929), a French administrator with
an excellent knowledge of the language. In his work,Le Cambodge(1900–4),
Aymonier published an inventory of all known monumental sites in Cambo-
dia along with several sites in Siam, such as the Khmer temple of Phimai. He
also studied the evolution of Cambodian texts, translating the Khmer inscrip-
tions so far found. Aymonier undertook theWrst survey of the other great
civilization of the area, the Champa, located mainly in present Vietnam. His
studies had been preceded by those of linguists and scholars of comparative
religions. As in the Khmer area, the Cham inscriptions indicated the presence
of two distinct languages, one of them Sanskrit (Malleret 1969: 45). These were
published by Aymonier, both on his own and in collaboration with Barth and
Bergaigne, from 1885 until the end of the century (Lafont n.d.).
South and South East Asia 233