The Cambodian Royal Chronicle: Including Chou Ta-Kuan's Report on the Customs of Cambodia by Chanda Chhay

Author:Chanda Chhay [Chhay, Chanda]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Vantage Press
Published: 2009-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

(Dance move: A Cambodian intellectual property carved in stone)

APPENDIX

(Author’s note: The following document is translated from Khmer into English by the author. Chou Ta-Kuan’s report was translated from Chinese to Khmer and published in 1971 by Mr. Li Theam Teng et al.)

(Chou Ta-Kuan’s Report on the Customs of Cambodia)

Preface

The report of Chou Ta-Kuan about the customs of the people of Chenla (Cambodia), which you are reading, is one of the priceless documents on Cambodian history. It is one of the most frequently cited sources when historians wrote about Cambodia.

As Cambodian students, who studied Cambodian history in school, we usually heard or knew of Chou Ta-Kuan and his report about the customs of the people of Cambodia. However, most of the references of our study usually came from the translation of secondary source--namely the French text by Paul Pelliot, not from the primary text of Chou Ta-Kuan.

In his preface, Mr. Pelliot indicated that his effort to search for and translate Chou Ta-Kuan’s report on the customs of the people of Cambodia followed an earlier effort of Mr. Abel Remousat? who had translated and published Chou’s account in 1819. However, Mr. Remousat’s translation was not as detailed; hence, successive efforts were made to improve and enhance the earlier translation.

Mr. Pelliot spent a number of years in China to study and translate Chou Ta-Kuan’s account of his visit to Cambodia at the end of the 13th century. Mr. Pelliot’s manuscript of the translation was published in 1902 in the Bulletin de l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient (BEFEO). In 1951, Mr. George Coedes, director of the l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient once again published Mr. Pelliot’s manuscript in a booklet with additional comments onto the text.

We, Cambodians, are very grateful to those experts who had spent times and efforts to research and dig up this historically priceless document for us to study. However, because those researchers/translators were not Cambodians, we are not fully satisfied with what had so far been accomplished. We always feel that if only we could translate Chou Ta-Kuan’s text directly from Chinese to Khmer (Cambodian) instead of from secondary sources, it would not only satisfy our ego but also be more accurate.

During my earlier years of education, I had studied Chinese for several years. Though my Chinese is now not as proficient (due to less frequently use of the language), I have nevertheless kept up my Chinese writing throughout my life and kept those writings such as the Chinese names of places, materials, and publications as documents for research.

In 1962, I had the opportunity to head a delegation of Cambodian writers on a cultural mission to visit China. Before my arrival in China, I had conceived a plan to ask my Chinese counterparts to help me locate and see the original scripts of Chou Ta-Kuan’s visit to Cambodia in the 13th century. When I met with the Chinese Minister of Culture, who was also the head of the Association of Chinese Writers, I had asked if he would fulfill my wish to

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