When someone thinks about Kapucha, usually think about the Angkor area. Its palaces and temples summon both a sense a mystery as they looks like coming from the depths of the past, and also wonder for their astonishing beauty. Also the Khmers are very proud of Angkor, as they even drew the Angkor Wat temple on their own flag. These palaces and temples aren't the heirloom of just a kingdom that rose out of nothing and died into the thin air. What brought to the Angkor time, and is still keep going on with the Kingdom of Cambodia (or Kampucha), is an history that goes through many kingdoms. I just want to write in short the story of what happened before and after Angkor, just to help to look in a different way at what I'm about to show you, seen that the places that I'm going to show you are a result of a complicate history.

In our days we don't have many details about the history of Kampucha itself, as the Khmers were used to keep record of their life on perishable supports (wood and banana leaves). The heat and humidity, along wars, destruction and floods, lost all these memories from those times. So, the scholars, in our days, have to do an "indirect" research to know more about the past of the Khmers.

The best ways are focused into a research through the documentation left by the countries that had more interaction with the Khmers. The first were the Chinese people, as they were used to have commerce with the Khmers, and the other country, is the Champa kingdom (it's the modern Viet-Nam), as they were the most bitter enemies of the Khmers. Beside this, the archaeologists did also on-site researches to see if what was written in the Chinese and Champa chronicles was real. Doing so, they both confirmed many things, and discovered also some new.

Starting from the beginning of Khmer history, the scholars, following the chronicles of that times, accept that on the beginning there wasn't a real "Kingdom", but a cluster of state-city, just like the ancient Greek Polis, or the Italian Renaissance cities. The records make believe that in the 4th century BC a kingdom rose and gathered all these small state-cities, under a single reign. This reign is known as "Funan Kingdom". The scholars don't know the real name of the kingdom as "Funan" is how the Chinese were calling it (in Chinese 扶南), while the Thais were calling it Fu-na-n (in Thai ฟูนาน). The scholars suppose that it could come from the ancient word "Bnam" that meant "hill".

So, the name Funan could mean something like "the Mountain State" or "the Mountain City". The main city of the country probably was the sea port ofÓc Eo (near the modern Hà Tiên), placed on the Mae Khong delta, in the modern days Viet Nam. The archaeologists, while digging there, had a big surprise. Some misplaced goods. In fact, here they found some Roman and Hellenistic goods. So, they suppose that at the Roman and Ancient Greece times this was already an important seaport that already kept connection with Europe through India and Indonesia.

Later the kingdom of Funan started to weaken, probably after the collapse of the Roman Empire, that closed the commercial connections. The Chinese chronicles tell us that, in the 550 AD, a vessel of the same Funan Kingdom started its way for the conquest of the very kingdom, and in 60 years absorbed it all. Here it started a new kingdom, called Chenla Kingdom, also known in China as Zhenla (in Chinese 真腊) and Chân Lạp (in Vietnamese). This kingdom was divided in two main regions, the Chenla of Water, near the Mae Khong delta, and the Chenla of Land, on the northern parts of Kampucha and Laos.

This kingdom lasted quite short, as around the year 800 AD, the continuous invasions of the Mae Khong delta, and the weakening of the Chenla Kingdon, brought the kings to move the capital upstream of the Mae Khong river, into a safer place, and so was born the new Khmer Kingdom. The new capital rose on the Tonle Sap Lake, the biggest lake of South East Asia. On the beginning, on a place that in our days is called Roluos, where they founded their first home, a city named Hariharalaya.

The name Hariharalaya comes from a deity called Harihara, which represent both Hari (an avatar of the Hindu God Vishnu), and Hara (an avatar of the Hindu God Shiva). The God Harihara, has characteristics of the both Gods. As you can see in the fourth picture of this group, showing the statue of the head of this God (This picture is not mine, but was found on internet. This statue is in Phnom Da, Kampucha). As you can see, the same God shares representations of the two Gods, like the Mitre cap of Lord Vishnu, and the curly locks of Lord Shiva.

The continuous floods, forced the king to move again the capital to a safer place, where later rose the Angkor of our times. This was the beginning of the Angkor Age, and also of the Khmer Empire. Most of the things that I'll show you about Kampucha are coming from this time, and when I'll show you something from another time, I'll make a very short introduction. Before to start showing the pictures of the travel, I want to type one more thing.

These are not my words. In fact, are the words of the famous traveller Cristoforo Colombo, while in his fourth travel (1502-1503), he decided to make is route to Asia (he still thought that America was Asia) and to follow the coast to reach the gold mines of Champa, near the Chenla seaport of Óc Eo. He wrote from the modern Jamaica "I reached the land of Cariay... Here I received news of the gold mines of Ciamba (Champa) which I'm seeking". In the following part of my diary, I'm not showing gold mines, but other kind of treasure still worth the long travel to Asia.

Francesco Benvenuti per Newsfood.com

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