386 Part V: Southeast Asia
busy reproducing the world of the gods here on earth—while simultaneously
channeling the waters to support agriculture and human life.
Angkor. The middle Mekong between Phnom Penh, the modern capital
of Cambodia, and the Tonle Sap, the great fresh-water lake that quadruples
every year from monsoonal floodwaters that cause its tributary to the Mekong
to temporarily reverse course, has been the heartland of Khmer civilization
since the sixth century. Here the kingdom of Chenla developed between the
sixth and eighth centuries C.E., followed by the brilliant Angkor state from the
ninth through thirteenth centuries. As a “nagara,” from which its name derived,
Angkor was unrivaled. Each of the 25 rulers of the Angkor dynasty built his
own temple-palace-mausoleum complex on the northern bank of Tonle Sap.
Angkor kings were first of all warrior-kings, rising from amongst other chief-
tains, defeating some in battle and winning the admiring fealty of others, and
binding chieftains to them through gifts of land and gifts of honor; a palanquin
with gold stretchers and four gold-handled parasols went to ministers of high-
est rank. Finally came bonds of kinship as Angkor kings accepted wives from
allied chiefs. We still can see these warrior-kings depicted in bas relief on royal
compound walls, Suryavarman reviewing his armies, his best general mounted
on a great war elephant.
But they were also more than warrior-kings. When Jayavarman II came to
power in 802 after a period of captivity in Java where he saw a god-like king
rule from a sacred court, he followed up his conquest of his rivals by establish-
ing the royal lingam—emblem of the god Shiva in the form of his phallus—in a
temple-pyramid called Rong Chen. Many centuries later, in nineteenth century
Bali, Indic kingship would require of the king “to project an enormous calm at
the center of an enormous activity by becoming palpably immobile” (Geertz
1980:130). But in ninth century Angkor, kings had too much work to do, as
sovereign-warriors as well as god-kings; it was Shiva’s lingam that was housed,
sacred and immobile, in the divine center of the kingdom, which was simulta-
neously a replica of Shiva’s Himalayan abode and the center of the universe.
The terraced monuments that replicated Hindu conceptions of the abode
of the gods in the marshy flatlands of central Cambodia required enormous
resources of land, labor, and wealth. Land and labor could be expanded by
conquest, by the taking of slaves and by corvée labor. Additional wealth was
required through taxation, but Angkor had no monetary system. Taxes were
paid in rice and other primary produce. Land registers were maintained by
functionaries who determined the amount of produce owed on the basis of the
quality of land. Land irrigated from royally sponsored irrigation canals could
get two or three crops per year and were consequently assessed more than a
rain-fed upland field. Peasants were required to produce double what they
needed to survive in order to pay taxes. For specialist classes, taxes were paid in
honey, wax, sugar, spices, salt, medicine, livestock, feathers, rhino horns, ivory,
sandalwood, and cloth. A stone inscription from the Temple of Preah Khon
describes the provisioning of the temple: “The king and the owners of villages