cambodia

Kingdom's 2011 GDP 6.9%

2012-01-29T19:52:00.000-08:00

Cambodia's gross domestic product grew 6.9 per cent year-on-year in 2011, and is set to increase to 6.5 per cent this year, according to preliminary projections from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Please click this link

ប្រវត្តិពុទ្ធិសាសនា

2010-07-14T20:44:00.001-07:00

ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាចាប់កំណើតឡើងនៅលើទឹកដីកម្ពុជាតាំងពីសតវត្ស ទី៥មកម្ល៉េះ ដោយមានប្រភពខ្លះបង្ហាញថានៅសតវត្សទី៣នៃគ្រឹស្តសករាជ និងឯកសារខ្លះទៀតបង្ហាញថាព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាថេរវាទត្រូវបាននាំចូលមកលើ ទឹកដីកម្ពុជាក្នុងរាជព្រះបាទអសោក ដែលបានបញ្ជូនសមណទូត២អង្គព្រះនាម សោណត្ថេរ និងឧត្តរត្ថេរ មកកាន់ទឹកដីសុវណ្ណភូមិតាំងពីសតវត្សទី៣មុនគ្រឹស្តសករាជ។ ហើយសាសនានេះបានបន្តរីកចម្រើនបន្តិចម្តងៗជាមួយនឹងព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនា ដូចមានសិលាចារឹក មួយនៅលើទឹកដីវៀតណាមសព្វថ្ងៃ គឺសិលាចារឹកវ៉ូកាញ់ ខេត្តញ៉ាត្រាងចុះកាលបរិច្ឆេទនាសតវត្សទី៣ ដែលបាននិយាយពីព្រះមហាក្សត្រគឺព្រះបាទស្រីមារទាក់ទងទៅនឹង ពុទ្ធសាសនានេះផងដែរ។ ក្រៅពីការចូលមកកាន់ទឹកដីខ្មែរតាមរយៈអ្នកផ្សព្វផ្សាយទាំងនោះ ពុទ្ធសាសនាក៏ត្រូវបានមកតាមរយៈពួកអ្នកជំនួញឥណ្ឌាផងដែរ។ ហើយ ចាប់ពីសតវត្សទី១៣រៀងមក លើកលែងតែនៅសម័យដែលខ្មែរក្រហមគ្រប់គ្រងអំណាច ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាបានក្លាយទៅជាសាសនារបស់រដ្ឋ ដែលមានពុទ្ធសាសនិកជាខ្មែរប្រមាណជិត៩៥%នៃប្រជាជនសរុប។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនានៅសម័យហ្វូណន
អាណាចក្រហ្វូណនពីសតវត្សទី២មុនគ្រឹស្តសករាជ រហូតដល់សតវត្សទី៦នៃគ្រឹស្តសករាជ បានកាន់នូវលទ្ធិហិណ្ឌូដោយមានព្រះមហាក្សត្រជាអ្នកដឹកនាំ និងមានជំនឿលើព្រះសិវ និងព្រះវិស្ណុ។ ទោះជាយ៉ាងនេះក្ដីព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ក៏មានវត្តមានរួចជាស្រេចហើយនៅលើទឹកដីនៃអាណាចក្រនេះ ដែលជាសាសនាទី២បន្ទាប់ពីព្រាហ្មណ៍សាសនា។ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាមានភាព រីកចម្រើនរុងរឿងនៅកំឡុងសតវត្សទី៥-៦នៃគ្រឹស្តសករាជក្នុងរជ្ជកាល ព្រះបាទកៅឌិណ្ឌន្យវរ្ម័ន ព្រោះមានការបញ្ជូនព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរ និងជាតិឥណ្ឌាទៅកាន់ប្រទេសចិនដើម្បីយកឯកសារ និងពុទ្ធរូបទៅថ្វាយដល់ស្ដេចក្រុងចិន ហើយព្រមទាំងបានជួយបកប្រែគម្ពីររពីសំស្ក្រឹតទៅភាសាចិនទៀតផង។ ព្រះសង្ឃនាមសង្ឃបាលបានគង់នៅ ស្រុកចិន១៦ឆ្នាំព្រមទាំងបានទទួលងារជាព្រះរាជគ្រូរបស់ចិនទៀតផង នេះក៏ព្រោះតែចំណេះដឹងផ្នែកសាសនារបស់ព្រះអង្គ។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យចេនឡា
នៅសម័យហ្វូណនព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនានៅរុងរឿងគួរសមនៅឡើយ។ លុះដល់ចុងសតវត្សទី៧តាមសង្ឃដីការបស់ព្រះសង្ឃចិនមួយអង្គព្រះនាមយ៉ី សិង ដែលបាននិមន្តត្រឡប់ពីប្រទេសឥណ្ឌាទៅកាន់ប្រទេសចិនកាត់តាម រាជាណាចក្រចេនឡាឱ្យដឹងថា ‘ពីដើមឡើយព្រះធម៌មានភាពរុងរឿងណាស់ ហើយបានផ្សព្វផ្សាយគ្រប់ទិសទី តែឥឡូវនេះស្ដេច កំណាច មួយអង្គបានបំផ្លិចបំផ្លាញចោលអស់ ហើយព្រះសង្ឃរកតែមួយអង្គនិមន្តមិនបានផង (ត្រឹងងា ប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រខ្មែរភាគ១+២,១៩៧៣)។ តាមរយៈនេះឃើញថាព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាត្រូវបានសាបរលាបនូវឥទ្ធិពលរបស់ខ្លួន នៅក្នុងសតវត្សនេះ ប៉ុន្តែមិនមែនមានន័យថាបាត់បង់ទាំងស្រុងនោះទេ ផ្ទុយទៅវិញនៅសតវត្សក្រោយមកពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយានបានចាប់ផ្ដើមផ្សាយ ឥទ្ធិពល របស់ខ្លួន និងមានប្រជាពលរដ្ឋបានគោរពខ្លះៗហើយ។ នៅសម័យនេះមានសិលាចារិកតែមួយគត់ដែលនិយាយពីព្រះភិក្ខុពុទ្ធសាសនា ចំនួនពីរអង្គ។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យអង្គរ
បន្ទាប់ពីការទ្រុឌទ្រោមនៃលទ្ធិពុទ្ធសាសនាហីនយាននៅសម័យចេនឡានា កំឡុងសតវត្សទី៧មក ពុទ្ធសាសនា មហាយានបានចាប់ផ្តើមកកើតឡើង រហូតដល់សម័យអង្គរ។ នៅក្នុងសតវត្សទី៩រជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២ មានការ ប្រារព្វធ្វើពិធីទេវរាជនៅលើភ្នំគូលែន ដែលអាចបង្ហាញថាព្រះរាជាអង្គនេះមានជំនឿយ៉ាងមុតមាំចំពោះ ព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនា ដែលមានឥទ្ធិពលខ្លាំងក្លានៅសម័យនោះ និងមានការគោរពរាប់អានខ្លាំងពីប្រជារាស្ត្រខ្មែរ។ តែទោះជាយ៉ាងណាក្ដីក៏ពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយានបានបន្តវត្តមានរបស់ខ្លួនដដែល នៅលើទឹកដីខ្មែរលាយឡំជាមួយនឹងលទ្ធិព្រាហ្មផងដែរ។ តាមរយៈឯកសារខ្លះបានបង្ហាញថាពុទ្ធសាសនាបានរីកចម្រើន និងមានការទទួលស្គាល់បន្តិចម្ដងៗ ពីប្រជារាស្ត្រ និងព្រះមហាក្សត្រខ្មែរបន្តបន្ទាប់មក។ នៅសតវត្សទី៩ក្នុងរាជព្រះបាទយសោវរ្ម័នទី១ មានការសាងសង់បារាយណ៍ខាងកើតឈ្មោះ យសោធរតដាក ដោយនៅភាគខាងកើតលើច្រាំងនៃបារាយណ៍នេះមានការសាងសង់បន្ថែមនូវ អាស្រមសម្រាប់គណៈសាសនានៅសម័យនោះដូចជា៖
-ព្រាហ្មណាស្រម សម្រាប់អ្នកកាន់និកាយព្រះឥសូរ
-វៃស្នវាស្រម សម្រាប់អ្នកកាន់និកាយព្រះវិស្ណុ
-សៅគតាស្រម សម្រាប់អ្នកកាន់សាសនាព្រះពុទ្ធ
តាមរយៈនេះឃើញថានៅសម័យនោះពុំមានការហាមឃាត់ មិនឱ្យគោរពព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនានោះទេ ទោះបីព្រាហ្មណ៍សាសនាមានការរីកចម្រើនខ្លាំងក៏ដោយ។ ហើយព្រះមហាក្សត្រមានការបើកចំហចំពោះប្រជាពលរដ្ឋឱ្យមានសិទ្ធិក្នុង ការគោរពសាសនានោះដែរ។
តាមប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្ររបស់ខ្មែរយើងសម័យអង្គរបានបង្ហាញទៀតថា នាសម័យអង្គរ ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយានបានចាប់ផ្ដើមរុងរឿងនៅក្នុងរាជ្យរបស់ក្សត្រ មួយចំនួន។
-រាជព្រះបាទសូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី១
ព្រះបាទសូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី១ជាបឋមក្សត្រខ្មែរទី១នៃសម័យអង្គរ ដែលបានលើកតម្កើងព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាឱ្យថ្កុំថ្កើងរុង រឿង។ ទ្រង់គ្រងរាជសម្បត្តិនៅកំឡុងឆ្នាំ(១០០២-១០៥០) ជាពុទ្ធសាសនិកដ៏ឆ្នើម ដែលបានគាំទ្រ និងលើកទឹកចិត្តដល់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋដែលរាប់អានចំពោះព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា លើសពីនេះពុទ្ធសាសនាថេរវាទត្រូវបានព្រះអង្គធ្វើការផ្សព្វផ្សាយ ឱ្យកាន់តែរុងរឿង ហើយបានតម្កើងសាសនានេះជាសាសនារបស់រដ្ឋ។ ទោះជាព្រះអង្គជាពុទ្ធសាសនិកក៏ដោយចុះ ព្រះអង្គក៏តែងមេត្តាដល់សាសនាព្រាហ្មណ៍ផងដែរ ដោយនៅសម័យនោះអ្នកកាន់ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា និងអ្នកកាន់សាសនាព្រាហ្មណ៍បានរស់នៅជាមួយគ្នាដោយសុខសាន្ត។ តាមសិលាចារិកបានបង្ហាញអំពីទឹកចិត្តរបស់ព្រះអង្គ គោរពស្រឡាញ់ចំពោះពុទ្ធសាសនាទាំងពីរនិកាយ គឺហិនយាន និងមហាយាន ដោយព្រះអង្គបានប្ដូរតួនាទីរបស់គ្រួសារព្រាហ្មណ៍សិវកៃវល្យដែលមាន នាទីរៀបចំពិធីសម្រាប់ព្រះមហាក្សត្រតាមបវេណីព្រាហ្មណ៍នោះ ឱ្យទៅជាបុព្វជិតកំពូល របស់ព្រះអង្គវិញ។ ភស្ដុតាងមួយទៀតដែលបង្ហាញឱ្យកាន់តែច្បាស់ថាព្រះអង្គជាពុទ្ធសាសនិក នោះ គឺព្រះអង្គមានមរណៈនាមថា នវ៌ាបទ។
-រាជ្យព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧
ព្រះមហាវីរក្សត្រដ៏ឆ្នើមបំផុតរបស់ខ្មែរនាសម័យអង្គរ គឺព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧ដែលជាស្ថាបនិកទី៣នៃទីក្រុងអង្គរ សំណង់ប្រាសាទជាច្រើនត្រូវបានសាងសង់នៅក្នុងរាជក្សត្រអង្គនេះ ដែលសំណង់ប្រាសាទទាំងនោះជាប្រភេទសំណង់ បែបពុទ្ធសាសនា និងខ្លះទៀតបង្ហាញពីការបញ្ជូលគ្នា ទាំងពុទ្ធលក្ខណ និងព្រាហ្មណ៍លក្ខណ។ ទ្រង់គ្រងរាជ្យសម្បត្តិក្នុង ឆ្នាំ(១១៨១-១២១៥) ដែលអ្នកប្រវត្តិវិទូបានចាត់ទុកថាជាសម័យកាលមួយដែលកម្ពុជារុងរឿង ជាទីបំផុត ក្នុងប្រវត្តិ សាស្ត្រខ្មែរ។ ក្រៅពីការរីកចម្រើនរុងរឿងក្នុងផ្នែកសង្គម នយោបាយ ហើយវិស័យសាសនាក៏រីកចម្រើនព្រមជាមួយនោះផងដែរ។ ព្រះអង្គបានលើកស្ទួយព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយាន ឱ្យបានថ្កុំថ្កើង តែទោះជាយ៉ាងនេះក្ដីព្រះអង្គក៏មិនដែលបំភ្លេចចោលព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនា នោះដែរ។ ព្រះអង្គបានបង្រួមសាសនាទាំងពីរចូលគ្នាតែមួយ ក្នុងបំណងដើម្បីលើកស្ទួយដល់ពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយានដែលព្រះអង្គបានគោរព ជាសាសនារបស់រដ្ឋ និងដើម្បីកុំឱ្យប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរដែលនៅជាប់ដិតដាមជាមួយ ព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនាមានការអាក់អន់ចិត្តផងដែរ។ ភាពវៃឆ្លាតនេះបានធ្វើឱ្យមានការឯកភាពគ្នាក្នុងការរស់នៅរបស់ ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋក្រោមការដឹកនាំរបស់ទ្រង់ និងធ្វើឱ្យមានស្ថេរភាពនយោបាយក្នុងស្រុកផងដែរ។ លទ្ធិទេវរាជត្រូវបានប្រែក្លាយទៅជាពុទ្ធិរាជវិញ មានភស្ដុតាង ដែលបង្ហាញថាពុទ្ធសាសនាមហាយានមានការរីកចម្រើនខ្លាំងនៅក្នុងសម័យនេះ ដូចជា សំណង់ប្រាសាទបែបពុទ្ធសាសនាជាច្រើនពាសពេញផ្ទៃប្រទេស ដូចជា(ប្រាសាទតាព្រហ្ម ប្រាសាទព្រះខ័ន)ជាដើម ដែលជាស្នាព្រះហស្ថរបស់ព្រះអង្គ។ នៅសម័យឆ្នាំ១១៨០ព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរមួយរូបជាបុត្ររបស់ព្រះបាទជ័យ វរ្ម័នទី៧ ព្រះនាមតាមលិន្ទ បានទៅសិក្សាភាសាបាលី និងចំណេះដឹងផ្នែកព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនានៅកោះសេរីលង្កាហើយបាននាំចូល ចំណេះដឹងទាំងនេះមកវិញនៅកំឡុងឆ្នាំ១១។ ព្រះអង្គទទួលមរណៈនាមថា មហាបរមសៅគត។ ព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧ទ្រង់ផ្ទាល់ជាពុទ្ធសាសនិក មហាយានដែលជាភស្ដុតាងបញ្ជាក់កាន់តែច្បាស់ថាពុទ្ធសាសនាថេរវាទបាន រីកចម្រើនរុងរឿងខ្លាំងនៅសម័យនោះ។ បេសកកម្មរបស់ពួកចិននៅសម័យនោះមកកាន់ក្រុងអង្គរ ដែលដឹកនាំដោយ Chou Ta-Laun នៅឆ្នាំ១២៩៦-១២៩៧ បានកត់សម្គាល់ឃើញមានព្រះសង្ឃពុទ្ធសាសនាថេរវាទនៅលើទឹកដីនេះ។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនានៅសម័យចុងអង្គរ
គេបានដឹងមកហើយដែរថា ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាថេរវាទនេះរីកចម្រើនតាំងពីរាជព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៧មក ម្លេះដោយទ្រង់បានបញ្ជូនបុត្ររបស់ទ្រង់ព្រះនាមតាមលិន្ទទៅ បួសជាព្រះសង្ឃ និងសិក្សាចំណេះដឹងពីពុទ្ធសាសនាជាភាសាបាលីនៅកោះស្រីលង្ការ។ ព្រះអង្គម្ចាស់តាមលិន្ទបានត្រឡប់មកកម្ពុជាវិញ ហើយបានផ្សព្វផ្សាយ អប់រំប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរតាមជំនឿ និងបែបបទព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាដែលទ្រង់បានរៀនសូត្រ។ ទ្រង់បានក្លាយទៅជាព្រះសង្ឃជាន់ខ្ពស់នៅសម័យនោះដោយការចេះដឹងរបស់ ព្រះអង្គ។
នៅក្នុងរាជព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៨ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាត្រូវបានបំផ្លិចបំផ្លាញ រូបចម្លាក់បែបពុទ្ធសាសនាត្រូវបានកោសលុប និងបំផ្លាញចោល ឬប្ដូរទៅជារូបបែបព្រាហ្មណ៍វិញ។ គេឃើញមានការវាយកម្ទេចព្រះពុទ្ធរូបចោល។ សម័យនេះពួកព្រាហ្មណ៍ទាំងអស់ត្រូវបានសណ្តោសឡើងវិញ និងផ្ដល់សិទ្ធក្នុងការពង្រឹងសាសនានេះឡើងវិញផងដែរ។ តែទោះបីជាយ៉ាងណាក៏ដោយព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាត្រូវបានប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរនិយម កាន់តែច្រើនណាស់ទៅហើយ។ បើទោះបីជាមានប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរកាន់ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនានេះច្រើនណាស់ទៅហើយ យ៉ាងណាក្ដី ក៏បដិវិត្តសាសនាពីព្រាហ្មណ៍ ទៅព្រះពុទ្ធនោះមិនអាចធ្វើទៅរួចនោះដែរ។ ដូចនេះសាសនានេះបានពួនសម្ងំនៅក្នុងស្រទាប់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែររហូតដល់ រជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទត្រសក់ផ្អែមទើបមានការលើកស្ទួយព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាឱ្យ រីកចម្រើនឡើងវិញរហូតមកដល់សព្វថ្ងៃនេះ។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យកណ្ដាល
ក្រោយសតវត្សទី១៣មកព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាត្រូវបានលើកតម្កើងជាសាសនារបស់ រដ្ឋ។ ព្រះរាជាខ្មែរ និងប្រជាពលរដ្ឋគ្រប់មជ្ឍដ្ឋាន និយមព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនានេះខ្លាំងណាស់ និងមានជំនឿយ៉ាងមុតមាំ ដែលគេចាត់ទុកជាទីពឹងទីនឹក រឮក បើទោះបីជាប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរមិនទាន់បោះបង់ចោលជំនឿលើព្រលឹង អារក្ខ អ្នកតាក៏ដោយ។ ប៉ុន្តែចំពោះព្រាហ្មណ៍សាសនាពុំមានប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរគោរពរាប់អានទៀត នោះឡើយ។ ទោះជាយ៉ាងនេះក្ដីក៏ទំនៀមទម្លាប់បែបព្រាហ្មណ៍នៅតែដិតដាមក្នុង ប្រពៃណីរបស់របស់ជនជាតិខ្មែររហូតដល់សព្វថ្ងៃ។ ឯក្នុងព្រះបរមរាជវាំងវិញគេនៅឃើញមានពួកព្រាហ្មណ៍បាគូនៅមាន សេសសល់ ក្នុងភារកិច្ចជាអ្នករៀបចំពិធីផ្សេងៗ និងថែរក្សាទ្រព្យសម្បត្តិសម្រាប់រាជ្យ។
ក្នុងសម័យនោះចំនួនវត្តអារាមបានកើនឡើងជាលំដាប់។ ព្រះមហាថេរដែលមានតួនាទីមើលការខុសត្រូវលើការរៀបចំខាងសាសនា និងលើវត្តអារាមនៅក្នុងខេត្តនីមួយៗ លែងមានលទ្ធភាពបន្តការគ្រប់គ្រងនោះតទៅទៀត ហើយ។ ដោយហេតុនោះសម្ដេចសង្ឃរាជដោយមានការព្រមព្រៀងជាមួយរាជាគណៈឋានានុក្រម និងសហការីទាំងអស់ ទ្រង់បានស្នើទៅព្រះរាជា សូមឱ្យមានការកែប្រែដែលមានបែងចែកដូចតទៅ៖
ព្រះមហាថេរមួយអង្គៗពីមុនឥឡូវត្រូវតែងតាំងជាមេគណៈ ទទួលខុសត្រូវលើគណៈសង្ឃក្នុងខេត្តនីមួយ។ ចំណែកឯព្រះរាជាគណៈទាំង៤សម្រាប់ និងសម្ដេចព្រះសង្ឃរាជជាអ្នកត្រួតពិនិត្យ និងសម្រេចកិច្ចការសាសនាតទាំង ពួងក្នុងព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជាទាំងមូល។ រាជាគណៈ ឬមន្ត្រីសង្ឃទាំង៤សម្រាប់ ត្រូវបែងចែកជាឯក ទោ ត្រី ចត្វា ដូចមន្ត្រីជាន់ខ្ពស់ខាងអាណាចក្រដែរ។
-សម្រាប់ឯកជារាជាគណៈរបស់ក្សត្រិយ៍ទ្រង់រាជ្យ
-សម្រាប់ទោជារាជាគណៈរបស់ក្សត្រិយ៍ឧភយោរាជ
-សម្រាប់ត្រីជារាជាគណៈរបស់សម្ដេចព្រះមហាឧបរាជ
-សម្រាប់ចត្វាជារាជាគណៈរបស់សម្ដេចព្រះវររាជជននី (សៀវភៅលោកត្រឹងងារប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រខ្មែរភាគ២)
ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាក៏ដើរតួយ៉ាងសំខាន់ផងដែរក្នុងវិស័យអក្សរសាស្ត្រ និងការតាក់តែងនិពន្ធ។ ហេតុនេះហើយទើបឃើញកើតមានជាអត្ថបទគម្ពីរ បិតក ជាតកច្រើនកើតឡើងហូរហែ។ មិនតែប៉ុណ្ណោះអត្ថបទបែបព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ពោលគឺទស្សនៈពុទ្ធនិយមត្រូវបានអ្នកនិពន្ធខ្មែរយកមកធ្វើជា វិធីសាស្ត្រ ក្នុងការតាក់តែងអត្ថបទរបស់ខ្លួនផងដែរ។ ព្រឹត្តិការណ៍ទាំងនេះបានកើតឡើងនៅក្រោយពេលដែលទីក្រុងអង្គរត្រូវបាន ព្រះរាជាខ្មែរបោះបង់ចោល ហើយប្រទេសធ្លាក់ចូលទៅក្នុងកលិយុគ ចម្បាំងកើតមានញឹកញាប់។
ការលើកយកទស្សនៈបុណ្យបាបរបស់ពុទ្ធសាសនាមកតាក់តែងជាស្នាដៃអក្សរ សិល្បិ៍នេះ ត្រូវបានអ្នកសិក្សាខ្លះវិភាគថាជាការលើកទឹកចិត្តដល់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋ ខ្មែរ ជាការលួងលោម កុំឱ្យពួកគាត់ធ្លាក់ទឹកចិត្ត បាក់ទឹកចិត្ត ដោយចាត់ទុកហេតុការណ៍ ឬទុក្ខលំបាកវេទនាដែលខ្លួនជួបប្រទះនេះជាកម្មពៀររបស់ខ្លួនដែលបាន សាងមកពីអតីតជាតិ។ ព្រះសង្ឃក្នុងពុទ្ធសាសនាបានដើរតួនាទីយ៉ាងសំខាន់ក្នុងការថែរក្សា អក្សរសិល្បិ៍ អក្សរសាស្ដ្រជាតិ និងប្រពៃណីទំនៀមទម្លាប់របស់ខ្មែរឱ្យនៅគង់វង្ស។
ចំពោះវិស័យសង្គមកិច្ចវិញព្រះសង្ឃជាគ្រូពេទ្រ ជាអ្នកកាត់ក្ដី ជាអ្នកមើលការខុសត្រូវដល់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរផងដែរ។ ទីធ្លាវត្តអារាម បានក្លាយទៅជាទីសម្រាប់ជនទុរគតសម្រាក និងព្យាបាលជំងឺ ការសណ្តោសរបស់ព្រះសង្ឃពុទ្ធសាសនា ការចូលរួមចំណែកច្រើនក្នុងវិស័យសង្គមជាតិនោះ បានធ្វើឱ្យព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាកាន់តែទទួលបានការរាប់អានពីប្រជាពលរដ្ឋ ខ្មែរ។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យអាណានិគមបារាំង
សម័យអាណានិគមនិយមបារាំងគិតចាប់ពីឆ្នាំ១៨៦៣ នៅពេលដែលព្រះនរោត្តមទ្រង់បានចុះសន្ធិសញ្ញាជាមួយបារាំងថ្ងៃ១១ខែសីហា ឆ្នាំ១៩៦៣នេះតែម្ដង ក្នុងបំណងយកបារាំងជាខែលការពារប្រទេសកម្ពុជាពីការឈ្លានពានរបស់ ប្រទេសជិតខាង មានយួន សៀមជាដើម។
ក្នុងកំឡុងសតវត្សទី ១៧, ១៨, ១៩ប្រទេសៀមបានមានឥទ្ធិពលយ៉ាងខ្លាំងមកលើនយោបាយក្នុងស្រុករបស់ ខ្មែរ ដែលជាហេតុធ្វើឱ្យឥទ្ធិពលនៃប្រពៃណីសាសនាក៏លាយឡំជាមួយគ្នានោះ ផងដែរ។ ដូចជានៅក្នុងឆ្នាំ១៨៥៥ ព្រះបាទនរោត្តមបាននិមិន្តព្រះសង្ឃធម្មយុត្តិកនិកាយពីប្រទេសសៀម ចូលមក្នុងស្រុកខ្មែរ ដើម្បីបង្កើតនិកាយនេះនៅក្នុងស្រុកខ្មែរផងដែរ។ សម្ដេចប៉ានទ្រង់ជាព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរក៏ប៉ុន្តែទ្រង់បានទៅសិក្សាប្រទេស សៀម ហើយត្រូវបានតែងតាំងជាព្រះសង្ឃធម្មយុត្តិដំបូងគេបង្អស់នៅក្នុង ប្រទេសកម្ពុជា គង់នៅក្នុងវត្តបទុមវត្តីក្រុងភ្នំពេញ។ ហើយប្រពៃណីនេះបានបន្តជាប់គ្រប់រាជការព្រះមហាក្សត្រខ្មែររហូតដល់ សព្វថ្ងៃ។
ក្នុងសម័យអាណានិគមនេះ ក៏មិនខុសពីសម័យកណ្ដាលប៉ុន្មានដែរ ព្រះពុទ្ធ សាសនាបានដើរតួនាទីយ៉ាងសំខាន់នៅក្នុងសង្គមខ្មែរ ទាំងវិស័យសង្គមកិច្ច សុខាភិបាល អប់រំ យុត្តិធម៌ និងជាឃ្លាំងអភិរក្សអក្សរសាស្ដ្រជាតិខ្មែរ ព្រមទាំងវប្បធម៍ប្រពៃណីរបស់ខ្មែរយើងផងដែរ។ ក្រោមការជិះជាន់របស់បារាំងមកលើប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរ និងពុទ្ធសាសនា បានធ្វើឱ្យព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរងើបឡើងតស៊ូបះបោរប្រឆាំងជាមួយបារាំង ប៉ុន្តែត្រូវបរាជ័យយ៉ាងធ្ងន់ធ្ងរ រហូតដល់មានការចាប់ខ្លួនធ្វើទោសទណ្ឌទៀតផង។ តែទោះបីជាយ៉ាងណាក៏ដោយក៏ពុទ្ធសាសនានៅតែពង្រឹងខ្លួនជានិច្ចពុំមាន ការចុះញ៉មជាមួយពួកបារាំងនោះឡើយ ដែលនៅឆ្នាំ១៩១៤គេឃើញមានការសាងសង់សាលាភាសាបាលីជាន់ខ្ពស់មួយនៅ ភ្នំពេញ និងក្រោយមកកែប្រែទៅជាមហាវិទ្យាល័យ។ ការសិក្សាអប់រំចំពោះព្រះសង្ឃមិនត្រឹមតែចំណេះដឹងខាងភាសាបាលីប៉ុណ្ណោះ ទេ ក៏ប៉ុន្តែមូលដ្ឋានគ្រឹះនៃចំណេះដឹងទូទៅតាមបែបទំនើបក៏ត្រូវយកមក សិក្សារៀនសូត្រនៅឯសាលារៀនផងដែរ។ សាលាបាលីជាន់ទាបត្រូវបានបង្កើតឡើងនៅក្នុងឆ្នាំ១៩៣៣ដើម្បីផ្ដល់ លទ្ធភាពឱ្យព្រះសង្ឃដែលទើបបួសថ្មីអាចសិក្សាពីភាសាបាលីនេះពី កម្រិតដំបូងបាន។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យ ខ្មែរក្រហម
កំឡុងឆ្នាំ១៩៧៥នៅពេលដែលពួកខ្មែរក្រហមបានដណ្ដើមកាន់កាប់ទីក្រុង ភ្នំពេញជាស្ថាពរ ពួកគេបានបំបាត់ ចោលទាំងអស់នូវជំនឿសាសនាផ្សេងៗ មិនឱ្យមានការគោរពប្រតិបត្តិអ្វីទាំងអស់ សូម្បីតែព្រះសង្ឃជាទីសក្ការៈត្រូវបានពួកនោះចាប់ផ្សឹកទាំងអស់។ ទីអារាមបានក្លាយទៅជាឃ្លាំងផ្ទុកនូវសម្ភារ សព្វាវុធ និងជាឃ្លាំងស្រូវ ឬត្រូវបំផ្លាញ ចោល។ តាមការប៉ាន់ស្មាននៅមុនរបបខ្មែរក្រហមព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរមានចំនូនសរុប ចន្លោះពី៦៥០០០អង្គ ទៅ៨០០០០ អង្គ។ ប៉ុន្តែក្រោយពេលដែលខ្មែរក្រហមបានត្រូវបានកម្ចាត់ នៅកំឡុងឆ្នាំ១៩៨០ព្រះសង្ឃត្រូវបានគេប្រមូលផ្តុំឡើងវិញសល់មិន ដល់៣០០០អង្គផង។
+ពុទ្ធសាសនាសម័យក្រោយ របបប៉ុលពត
ក្រោយជ័យជំនះលើកងទ័ពខ្មែរក្រហមនៅឆ្នាំ១៩៧៩ ជំនឿសាសនាត្រូវបានបើកចំហឡើងវិញសម្រាប់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរ។ ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ក៏ត្រូវបានលើកតម្កើងសារជាថ្មីផងដែរ ដោយរដ្ឋាភិបាលបាននិមន្តព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរ ដែលបានភៀសខ្លួនទៅប្រទេសវៀតណាមកាលពីកំឡុងសម័យខ្មែរក្រហមនោះ ចូលមកក្នុងប្រទេសកម្ពុជាវិញដើម្បីដឹកនាំព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាឡើងវិញ។ នៅឆ្នាំ១៩៨១ព្រះសង្ឃខ្មែរមួយអង្គត្រូវបានតែងតាំងជាព្រះសង្ឃទី១នៃ កម្ពុជាគណៈមហានិកាយ ទ្រង់ព្រះនាមទេពវង្ស។ បច្ចុប្បន្ននេះព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាបានដើរតួនាទីយ៉ាងសំខាន់ក្នុងការដឹកនាំ ប្រទេស ពុទ្ធសាសនាបានក្លាយជាអ្នកអប់រំដល់ពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរទូទៅ ពុទ្ធសាសនាក៏បានជួយសង្គមខ្មែរក្នុងវិស័យផ្សេងៗផងដែរ។ ព្រះសង្ឃមានរាប់សែនអង្គនៅទូទាំងប្រទេស ដែលទន្ទឹមនឹងនោះវត្តអារាមក៏ត្រូវបានកសាងឡើងជាបន្តបន្ទាប់ពាសពេញ ប្រទេសផងដែរ។ នៅឆ្នាំ១៩៩១ក្រោយពីធ្វើមាតុភូមិនិវត្តន៍ចូលកម្ពុជាវិញ ព្រះបាទនរោត្តមសីហនុបានរៀបចំឡើងវិញនូវរចនាសម្ព័ន្ធដឹកនាំពុទ្ធសាសនា ដោយមានទាំងធម្មយុត្តិកនិកាយ និងមហានិកាយ។ ទន្ទឹមនឹងការចាត់ទុកព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាជាសាសនារបស់រដ្ឋ ស្របតាមរដ្ឋធម្មនុញ្ញរបស់កម្ពុជានៅឆ្នាំ១៩៩១ ការប្រកាន់ជំនឿសាសនាដទៃទៀតក៏ត្រូវបានគាំទ្រពីរដ្ឋាភិ បាលផងដែរ។

សរសេរដោយ អ្នកស្រាវជ្រាវ ឯកសារអេឡិចត្រូនិច ប៉ាន មូលដ្ឋានីយកម្មអក្ខរក្រមខ្មែរ

Cambodia's Bronze Mettle

2010-07-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

The very name "Angkor" conjures images of towering stone spires, rocks morphing into giant undulating snakes, carved faces bulging from temple walls. But these palaces and temples housed bronzes—idols, ritual objects and decorative statues that took their place within the endless unfolding of stone reliefs and statuary. In "Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia," the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art presents 24 such bronzes along with a dozen others that precede the Angkor period (ninth to mid-15th century). Together they establish that the Khmer people of Cambodia have a rich bronze-casting tradition that produced magnificent works.

As though proclaiming as much, the first piece we see is a 13-inch tall, 12th-century statue of a young woman sitting on her haunches, one knee raised, arms out to the side, crooked and pointing heavenward. There is something both celebratory and matter of fact about her, like a dancer striking a triumphant pose after a predictably great performance.
Scholars speculate that the figure once held aloft a brass disk polished to a mirror shine, and it is one of the show's few pieces that is not devotional. Two others flank the entrance—an urn and a bell, both some 20 inches high and covered in etched geometric designs. These are also the show's oldest pieces, attesting that Cambodia's fourth-century craftsmen participated in a broader production of bronzeware in Southeast Asia.
The story gains momentum in the second gallery with seventh-century sculptures in which Khmer artists incorporated stylistic elements from India and China. The fragment of a Buddha displays the elegant, relaxed pose and clinging robe Indian sculptors favored, while five smaller Buddhas adopt the Chinese proclivity for placing both hands in mudras (symbolic gestures).
These five bronzes also provide a glimpse into the institutional collaborations that made this exhibition possible. The figures, unearthed by chance in 2006 by a villager in Cambodia's Kampong Cham province, made their way to the conservation laboratory that the Sackler and Freer (its sister gallery) had just the year before established at the National Museum of Cambodia. The Getty Foundation, which will next host the show, provided most of the laboratory's funding. There conservators cleaned and stabilized the bronzes, whose green oxidation speaks of some 1,300 years underground.
But conservation is as much about reconstructing a work's past as it is about assuring its survival. Pointing to a small standing Buddha, Paul Jett, the head conservator and the show's co-curator, says that tests revealed it was not bronze but rather brass, "which is very unusual. The metal was probably imported, and my guess is that it came as another object that was melted down and recast. This is the earliest brass in Southeast Asia that I know of."
Similarly, X-rays of a charming Buddha with a flowing robe and large, splayed feet did not show the expected thin layer of metal with a ceramic core that is typical of a hollow cast. Instead, radiography revealed an elaborate iron armature embedded in solid metal. "It is made unlike anything I've ever seen," says Mr. Jett, who has worked with bronze sculpture for 30 years. "This is starting to build a body of technical knowledge on these pre-Angkorian pieces of which little is known," he adds.
More familiar to scholars are the bronzes of the 10th through 14th century that make up the rest of the show. As for nonscholars, a good way to appreciate the Khmers' distinctive style is by taking a detour into the museum's permanent collection. After you see the Freer's 11th-century Indian statue of the Hindu bull Nandi, the realism of the Khmer's depiction stands out—its legs are more proportional, its haunches heavier, its face more bovine. Similarly, the 12th-century crowned Buddha in the first gallery is at once stiffer and more realistic than the idealized 11th-century Buddha in the Sackler's adjoining South Asian gallery.
Overall, the casting of intricate ornamentation and dress is remarkable. A telling technical detail: In larger pieces, the core is held in place with pins, which leave holes that casters then have to fill. The chest of an 11th-century crowned Shiva thus bears penny-size marks, similar to old-fashioned vaccination scars. However, while the X-ray of a multiarmed 10th-century Buddha reveals similar pins, the casters did such a masterly job that the surface appears unblemished.
Angkor's mix of Hindu and Buddhist iconography is equally remarkable. Twelfth- and 13th-century Buddhas sit atop coiled cobras (one sporting the copper sheen of a previous restoration); a 13th-century Ganesha sits in full lotus, his navel shaped as an eye, Tantric symbols in his hands; and in a miniature shrine the Buddhist tantric deity Hevajra leaps middance encircled by female adepts.
As you walk around the shrine, peering between its tiny columns, the women appear to dance around their gilded god. And imagine now, as a visitor to Angkor, seeing the other bronzes—whether small or large idols, a lotus-shaped incense burner, a bell that once hung on an elephant, or the kneeling female figure—all glowing with golden warmth amid the stone walls of Angkor's temples and palaces. Mastery and magic.

The Buddhist Attitude

2010-05-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

In Buddhism, right attitude is closely connected with understanding and knowledge. It is founded on wisdom. With right attitude we see Buddhism not simply as a system of beliefs, but a teaching that offers an effective system for exploring reality and the deeper levels of mind, one that leads to the very foundation of consciousness itself. This naturally entails an element of penetrative insight and constant awareness. In addition to these more profound teachings, Buddhism also presents us with a system of rituals which are the natural result of over twenty-five centuries of cultural growth and development.

Because Buddhism is a religion of self-help, the first and foremost duty of a Buddhist is to understand the
supreme position of the human being and one's responsibility toward both oneself and fellow sentient beings. The Buddha did not claim any divine affinity. His enlightenment was a result of his own efforts, unaided by teachers or divine providence. There was no need for him to base his teachings on divine revelation, as is usually done by religious teachers and prophets. The Dhamma that he expounded is the Truth itself -- to introduce divine elements into it would be a superfluous exercise. His realization of the Dhamma and the validity of the teaching itself are the strength of his teachings, and this has rendered so-called divine inspiration or intervention irrelevant in the Buddhist context.

According to Buddhism, humanity's position is supreme. Human beings are their own masters, endowed with great potential, from mundane material concerns up to the highest spiritual achievements. This position is clearly exemplified by the Buddha's own struggles and successes. He attributed his enlightenment and all his achievements to human effort, not to divine grace. It is encouraging to know that, according to the Buddha, only a human being can become a Buddha, a position to which even gods and deities cannot aspire. Every human being possesses the seed of Buddha-nature, the potential to become a Buddha, and that potential can only be actualized through human endeavor.

The Buddha's assertion, unique and unparalleled in the history of religions, presupposes the principle of individual responsibility. Because man is supreme, a master of his own destiny, it follows that he must also be responsible for his own action and inaction. "You must walk the path yourself," says the Buddha, "the Tathagata (Buddha) only points the way."

Sometimes this statement is misconstrued to imply the Buddha's inability, or unwillingness, to be of real assistance to his followers. It is pointed out that in contrast with other religious teachers, prophets, or even deities, whose alleged role is that of a 'savior,' the function of the Buddha is merely that of a teacher, giving instruction and little else. This criticism is based on ignorance of the real personality and powers of the Buddha on the one hand, and blind faith in the so-called savior on the other. Even in so simple a matter as quenching thirst or hunger, one has to consume drinks or food oneself: is it not curious that one would look to an outside savior to fulfill one's larger and more profound needs? The problem becomes more complex when the savior has to respond to millions of prayers all at once, many of which are locked in conflicting interests. The Buddha was too honest and straightforward to suggest that anyone other than oneself, even a God (if one does exist), could be of real assistance if one fails to take responsibility for one's own actions. "You are your own refuge, who else could be your refuge?" These are the Buddha's words, as true and valid today as when they were pronounced by the Master more than 2,500 years ago.

Right attitude is possible only in a framework of freedom of thought, another prominent feature of Buddhist philosophy, and freedom of thought is possible only in the context of trust and confidence. The extent that freedom of thought is encouraged by the Buddha is uniquely characteristic of both the religion and its founder: not only did he insist that his disciples examine and reexamine his teachings, but he was willing even to subject himself and his character to their close scrutiny. Only a teacher of the highest impeccability could allow such an investigation.

Freedom of thought should therefore be considered an integral ingredient of the Buddhist attitude. This quality is essential in the context of Buddhism, which is known for its scientific approach. Like a good scientist, a Buddhist should constantly examine the Dhamma and experiment with its principles through practical application, by rationalizing and investigating them with an open mind. It is through such a process that faith and conviction, based on wisdom, will grow and become strengthened. To blindly believe, without exercising one's own reasoning faculties and without attempting at a direct experience, is, according to Buddhism, counterproductive to the development of wisdom.

Since freedom of thought occupies an important place in the Buddhist system, this naturally leads to another essential characteristic of the religion. A religious attitude rooted in freedom of thought points to religious tolerance, or tolerance with regard to the views and opinions of others. This explains why Buddhists are usually very tolerant people and why their religion has spread peacefully through the ages.

The Dhamma is like a raft, says the Buddha. It is used for crossing the river of pain, suffering, and conflict. Once the crossing has been accomplished, it is not necessary to cling onto the raft or carry it around. With such broad minded attitudes and intellectual maturity, Buddhists can share room on the 'raft' of Dhamma with others, without stubbornly holding on to it and arguing with one another as to the quality and the beauty of different 'rafts.'

Buddhism views all phenomena in terms of causal relationship. This means that all phenomena, all occurrences, whether empirically perceivable or otherwise, are subject to the law of cause and effect. Everything is conditioned by causal factors, and all things are themselves conditioning factors for other occurrences. Nothing is absolutely independent, for, according to the Buddhist philosophy, absolute existence is not possible.

Based on this principle of causal relationship, it naturally follows that all phenomena are interrelated and interdependent. One single event, trifling and insignificant as it may seem, may in fact be related to thousands of other events, and this relationship may extend, in the final analysis, to all other conceivable phenomena, even though they may seem as remote as the wildest imagination can stretch. Thus, Buddhism perceives all lives, human as well as nonhuman, and all things and events, not as independent entities, but rather as part and parcel of the whole cosmic order, interconnected in an infinitely complex relationship by the common law of conditionality.

Buddhist attitude allows for the growth of mutual understanding, trust and a deep sense of altruistic consideration. Selfishness and greed are the usual negative ramifications of a narrow world view, based on the philosophy of narcissistic hedonism. Buddhist philosophy is an antidote to this. It poses universal compassion as the foundation and driving motivation for social responsibility and action.

Buddhists regard the Buddha as the greatest teacher, the Dhamma, his great teachings, and the Sangha, his well-trained followers. The Buddha has shown the way, having himself gone before, but it is up to us to walk that way ourselves. This is a responsibility that each and every person must undertake individually. A Buddhist should maintain a scientific attitude, questioning, investigating, and experimenting with the Dhamma to develop full understanding of the Buddha's teachings. Practice of the Dhamma should be properly grounded on wisdom and supported by a conviction that all that is noble and good can be achieved by one's own efforts. Even the highest level of spiritual attainment, Buddhahood, is not beyond reach of those who persevere in their efforts.

[source: buddhanet.net]

អាពាហ៍ពិពាហ៍( Wedding )

2010-04-26T20:57:00.001-07:00

អាពាហ៍ពិពាហ៍ គឺជាពិធីមង្គលមួយយ៉ាងសំខាន់បំផុត ដោយហេតុថា ពិធីនេះមានអត្ថន័យដ៏ទូលំទូលាយណាស់ក្នុងគ្រួសារខ្មែរ គឺក្នុងពិធីនេះហើយដែលព្រឹទ្ធាចារ្យចាស់ទុំ ដែលជាឪពុកម្ដាយទាំងសងខាងរបស់កំលោះក្រមុំ ភ្ជាប់ផ្សំផ្គុំពួកគេដែលជាកូនឲ្យទៅស្វាមីភរិយាប្រចាំជីវិត ។ពាក្យអាពាហ៍នេះកើតចេញពីពាក្យសំស្ក្រឹតថា ’អាវាហី” ហើយមានន័យថា ការនាំកូនស្រីទៅខាងប្រុស ។ រីឯពាក្យពិពាហ៍វិញមានន័យថា ការនាំកូនប្រុសឲ្យទៅខាងកូនស្រី ហើយពាក្យនេះក៏កើតចេញពីភាសាសំស្ក្រឹតវិវាហី ។ តែចំពោះជនជាតិខ្មែរវិញ ខុសពីក្លិង្គគេមានទម្លាប់នាំកូនប្រុសទៅខាងកូនស្រីវិញ គឺចំណុចនេះហើយដែលចង្អុលឲ្យយើងដឹងថា ខ្មែរយើងនាសម័យអតីតកាលតែងនិយមស្រីជាធំក្នុងសង្គមជាតិ ។ បំណងធំរបស់ឪពុកម្ដាយ ចំពោះកូនគឺសុភមង្គលរបស់ប្ដីប្រពន្ធ ។ ពាក្យថា ប្ដី ឬស្វាមីមានន័យថា ម្ចាស់, លោកម្ចាស់ អ្នកចិញ្ចឹមបីបាច់ថែរក្សា ។ ចំណែកពាក្យថា ប្រពន្ធ ឬភរិយាវិញមានន័យថា បំណងមេត្រីរួមរឹត ។

ដូច្នេះបើនិយាយឲ្យខ្លីមក វត្ថុបំណងរបស់អ្នមានគុណទាំងឪពុកម្ដាយបង្កើត ទាំងឪពុកម្ដាយក្មេក គឺមានសេចក្ដីប្រាថ្នាឲ្យគូស្វាមីភរិយាស្រលាញ់គ្នា ប្រកបដោយសុខភាព សុខដុមរមនា សុភមង្គលចំពោះបុត្រាបុត្រីតែប៉ុណ្ណោះ តាំងពីពេលរៀបអាពាហ៍ពិពាហ៍រហូតដល់ចាស់ ពោលគឺពេលសក់ស្កូវ ឬបាក់ធ្មេញរៀងៗខ្លួន ។ បើនិយាយម្យ៉ាងទៀតគឺ ស្រលាញ់គ្នារហូតដល់ជីវិតក្ស័យតែម្ដង ។ ក្នុងករណីនេះហើយ ដែលបុព្វបុរសខ្មែរបានបង្កើតឡើង នូវពិធីការខ្លះដែលមានលក្ខណៈតឹងតែង និងអធឹកអធម ដើម្បីឲ្យស្វាមី-ភរិយាចងចាំទុកជាអនុស្សាវរីយ៍ កុំឲ្យភ្លេចពេលដែលខ្លួនគេទាំងពីរបានគ្នាជាប្ដី-ប្រពន្ធ ។ ម្យ៉ាងទៀតសូមរំលឹកឡើងវិញថា ភាពឱឡារឹកនៃពិធីអាពាហ៍ពិពាហ៍ខ្មែរ ដោយមានការចូលរួមពីសំណាក់ញាតិមិត្តជិតឆ្ងាយ ដែលជាភ្ញៀវផង និងជាសាក្សីដឹងឮផង ក៏ជាវិធីសាស្ត្រមួយដែរ ។ ទន្ទឹមជាមួយនេះវត្ថុបំណងមួយទៀតគឺ ដើម្បីឲ្យគូស្វាមីភរិយាពត់ចិត្តឲ្យចេះអត់ធ្មត់សង្កត់ចិត្ត សក្ដិសមនឹងពរសព្វសារធុការ ដែលបានទទួលនៅក្នុងច្បាប់រដ្ឋប្បវេណីខ្មែរ មានការយល់ព្រមពីអ្នកមានគុណទាំងសងខាង ។ក្នុងករណីនេះហើយ ដែលនាទីរបស់មេបាក្នុងនាមជាឪពុកម្ដាយខាងប្រុស ឬនាទីរបស់មេបាខាងស្រីមានសារសំខាន់ណាស់ ។ ម្យ៉ាងទៀតនាសម័យដើម គឺមានការកំណត់អាយុកាលដែរ ដែលប្រុសចាប់ពីអាយុ ១៧ ឆ្នាំ ចំពោះស្រីវិញពី ១៤ ឆ្នាំ ។ គេក៏កត់ត្រានូវពិធីលើកជំនូន ឬខាន់ស្លា ពិធីបែងចែកទ្រព្យតាមក្បួនប្រពន្ធទូលប្ដីរែក ។ នេះជាទំនៀមទំលាប់ដែលមានពីបុរាណកាលមក ។

ក្នុងការផ្សំផ្គុំបុត្រី និងបុត្រា គួររំលឹកឡើងវិញដែរ ដើម្បីឲ្យប្ដីប្រពន្ធចេះថែរក្សាគ្នា ដោយសុភមង្គល ចាស់ទុំខ្មែររមែងតែងជ្រើសរើសតាមតារាងផ្សំសម្ពង្ស និងតាមតារាងសម្ពង្សនាគ ដណ្ដឹងគូដែលជារបៀបមើលគូព្រេងបុរាណ ។ ម្យ៉ាងទៀតគេក៏ត្រូវមើលថ្ងៃខែ កំណើតតាមបទបែបបុរាណដូចជា របៀបមើលលក្ខណៈប្រុស-ស្រី ពិធីមើលវេលាជាដើម ដែលគេដកស្រង់តាមក្បួនពិភេក្សណ៍ ហោរា...។
រួមសេចក្ដីមក វត្ថុបំណងរបស់ឪពុកម្ដាយ ឬគូសា្វមីភរិយាគ្មានអ្វីក្រៅពីសេចក្ដីសុខសប្បាយ និងសិរីសួស្តីឡើយ សំរាប់ដំណើរជីវិតរបស់គេ ៕ (ម .ត្រាណេ និងពីពត៍មានCEN )

ប្រវត្ដិខ្លែងខ្មែរ

2010-04-26T00:56:00.001-07:00

១-សម័យមុននគរភ្នំ (៤០០ឆ្នាំ មុនគ.ស)
“ ខ្លែងឯក” ដែលមានឈ្មោះដើមថា “ខ្លែងព្នង” បានបង្កើតឡើងដោយបុព្វបុរសខ្មែរប្រមាណជា៤០០ឆ្នាំ មុនគ្រិស្ដសករាជសំរាប់បង្ហោះក្នុងពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងនារដូវច្រូតកាត់ ។ សម័យមុននគរភ្នំបុព្វបុរសខ្មែរមាន ជំនឿលើអ្នកតា ហើយជំនឿនោះនាំឱ្យដូនតាយើងតែងតែប្រារឰពិធីឡើងអ្នកតានៅដើមរដូវ វស្សាដើម្បីសុំទឹកភ្លៀងសំរាប់បង្កបង្កើនផល ហើយនារដូវច្រូតកាត់តែងតែប្រារឰពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងដើម្បីសម្ដែងនូវ ការដឹងគុណចំពោះអ្នកតាដែលបានជួយឱ្យភោគផលស្រូវដំណាំបានផលល្អ ។ ខ្លែងសម័យនោះ ឆ្អឹងធ្វើឡើងដោយឫស្សី និងតួខ្លែងពាស ដោយស្លឹកឈើ ដែលត្បាញដូចកន្ទេល ។
ពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងកើតឡើងផ្សារភ្ជាប់ជាមួយ នឹងវិស័យកសិកម្ម ។
២-សម័យនគរភ្នំ(ស.វទី១ដល់ទី៦)
ដើម ស.វនៃគ.ស រដ្ឋនគរភ្នំ ត្រូវបានបង្កើតឡើង ហើយដូនតាខ្មែរបានទទួលវប្បធម៌ឥណ្ឌា មានសាសនា អក្សរសិស្ប៍ សិល្បៈ ។ សម័យនគរភ្នំកសិកម្មមានការរីកចំរើនលូតលាស់ខ្លាំងដោយសារជោគជ័យខាង នយោបាយទឹក ។ អ្នកស្រុកចេះជីកព្រែកខ្វាត់ខ្វែងសំរាប់បង្ហូរទឹកជំនន់ទន្លេមេគង្គ ចោលចេញផង លាងសំអាតភក់ល្បប់ និងអំបិលដែលជ្រួតជ្រាបក្នុងដីផង និងសំរាប់ប្រើប្រាស់ជាគមនាគមន៍ផង ។ សេចក្ដីបញ្ជាក់ពីកសិកម្មរីកចំរើនតាមឯកសារចិន បានកត់ត្រាទុកថា “សាបព្រោះមួយឆ្នាំច្រូតកាត់បីរដូវ” ។ ពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងប្រហែលជាបានរៀបចំឡើងតាមជំនឿអ្នកតា និងព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនា ដើម្បីសម្ដែងនូវការដឹងគុណ ចំពោះអ្នកតា និងព្រះពាយ ដែលបានជួយឱ្យការដាំដុះទទួលផលបានច្រើន ។ សម័យនោះខ្មែរប្រកាន់យករបបមាតាធិបតេយ្យ ទើបខ្លែងត្រូវបានចាត់ទុកថាជាមេឬព្រះមហាក្សត្រិយានី ។ ខ្លែងព្នងក៏ត្រូវបានអ្នកស្រុក ហៅថា ខ្លែងមេកូន គឺមេជាព្រះមហាក្សត្រិយានី កូនជាប្រជារាស្ដ្រ ។
៣- សម័យចេនឡា (ស.វ ទី៧ ដល់ ទី៨)
សម័យចេនឡា នយោបាយទឹកមានភាពរឹងរឹតតែប្រសើរឡើងថែមទៀត ញ៉ាំងឱ្យមានការកសាងទីក្រុងធំៗនៅក្បែរមាត់ស្ទឹង និងញ៉ាំងឱ្យកសិកម្មកាន់តែមានការរីកចំរើន ឯពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងទំនងជាបានរៀបចំឡើង ប្រសើរជាងសម័យនគរភ្នំ ។
ប៉ុន្ដែ នៅពេលដែលចេនឡាគ្មានស្ថិរភាព នយោបាយនាស.វទី៨ ដោយទឹកដីត្រូវបានបែងចែកជាពីរ គឺចេនឡាដីគោក និងចេនឡា លិចទឹក ហើយប្រទេសជាតិក៏ធ្លាក់ក្រោមការត្រួតត្រានៃពួកជ្វាថែមទៀត នាំឱ្យអ្នកស្រុកពុំបានទទួលសេចក្ដីសុខក្សេមក្សាន្ដ ដូច្នេះពេលនោះប្រហែលជាពុំមានឱកាសរៀបចំពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងឡើយ ។
៤- សម័យអង្គរ (គ.ស៨០២ ដល់ ១៤៣១)
សម័យអង្គរ ជាសម័យដ៏រុងរឿងបំផុតនៃប្រវត្ដិសាស្ដ្រខ្មែរបានផ្ដើមឡើងនាគ.ស ៨០២ ដោយវីរមហាក្សត្រខ្មែរ គឺព្រះបាទជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២ បន្ទាប់ពីព្រះអង្គបានរំដោះប្រទេសផុតពីការត្រួតត្រារបស់ពួកជ្វា មក។ ក្នុងសម័យអង្គរប្រជានុរាស្ដ្របានសុខក្សេមក្សាន្ដ និងមានចិត្ដជ្រះថ្លាគោរពតាមជំនឿ ព្រហ្មញ្ញសាសនានិងព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ចូលរួម ដោយក្ដីរីករាយបំផុតក្នុងការកសាងប្រាសាទល្អៗវិចិត្រ ព្រមទាំងផ្លូវថ្នល់ ស្ពានពេញផ្ទៃប្រទេស ។ ភាពរុងរឿងនោះ ដោយសារនយោបាយទឹកត្រឹមត្រូវ មានការជីកបារាយណ៍ធំៗ ប្រឡាយទឹក ធ្វើឱ្យមានទឹកបរិបូណ៌ ញ៉ាំងឱ្យកសិកម្មលូតលាស់ជាអតិបរមា ហើយជីវភាពរបស់ប្រជារាស្ដ្របានស្គាល់នូវភាពសម្បូណ៌សប្បាយរុងរឿង យ៉ាងពិតប្រាកដ ។ តាមលោកជីវតាខ្វាន់ អ្នកការទូតចិន ដែលបានមកកាន់អង្គរនាគ.ស១២៩៦-១២៩៧ បានឱ្យដឹងថា ខ្មែរសម័យអង្គរអាចធ្វើស្រែបាន៣ឬ៤ដងក្នុងមួយឆ្នាំ ។
ដោយសារកសិកម្មរីកលូតលាស់ ពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងជាព្រះរាជពិធីមួយដ៏សំខាន់ ដែលជារៀងរាល់ឆ្នាំ តាមជំនឿព្រហ្មញសាសនា ទាក់ទងនឹងកសិកម្ម ព្រះមហាក្សត្រខ្មែរបានប្រារឰពិធីច្រត់ព្រះនង្គ័លនាដើមរដូវវស្សា ដើម្បីគោរពទេព្ដាដី និងជាព្រះរាជកិច្ច បើករដូវធ្វើស្រែចំការ ហើយនាដើមរដូវប្រាំងប្រារឰពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងដើម្បីសម្ដែងនូវការគោរព និងដឹងគុណចំពោះព្រះពាយ ក្នុងការបង្កធាតុអាកាសល្អសំរាប់អ្នកស្រុកច្រូតកាត់ប្រមូលផល ។ យោងតាមសិលាចារឹក គ.ស៩៧២ បានឱ្យដឹងថា នាសម័យអង្គរ ខ្លែងជាវត្ថុសក្ការៈ ។
ប៉ុន្ដែភាពថ្កុំថ្កើងខ្ពង់ខ្ពស់បំផុតនៃ សម័យអង្គរ បានបញ្ចប់ទៅវិញជាមួយនឹងភាពសោកសៅដ៏ជូរចត់ក្នុងប្រវត្ដិសាស្ដ្រ ខ្មែរនាគ.ស ១៤៣១ ដោយសារទ័ពសៀមសម័យក្រុងអយុធ្យាវាយលុកចូលក្រុងអង្គរ បង្កឱ្យបែកបាក់សង្គមគ្រួសារខ្មែរ រហូតដល់ត្រូវចាកចោលនាឆ្នាំ១៤៣២ ដោយព្រះបាទចៅពញាយ៉ាត។ ចាប់ពីពេលនោះមក អារ្យធម៌ខ្មែរ ចុះអន់ថយ និងផ្នែកខ្លះនៃវប្បធម៌ខ្មែរត្រូវ បាត់បង់ និងបាត់តម្លៃដូចជា សិល្បៈ ប្រពៃណី ទំនៀមទំលាប់ ក្នុងនោះខ្លែងត្រូវបានគេបំភ្លៃ ឱ្យយល់ថា ជាវត្ថុចង្រៃទៅវិញ ហើយព្រះ រាជពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងក៏ពុំប្រារឰតាំងពីពេលនោះមក។
៥- រជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទសត្ថាទី១ (គ.ស ១៥៧៦-១៥៩៥)
រហូតមកដល់ រជ្ជកាលព្រះសត្ថាទី១ ទើប មានអ្នកស្រុកខ្មែរបង្ហោះខ្លែងឡើងវិញ ។ ភស្ដុតាងគឺនាឆ្នាំ១៥៩០ ជនជាតិព័រទុយហ្គេ ម្នាក់ឈ្មោះ Quiroga de San Antonio បានមកទស្សនាស្រុកខ្មែរ សរសេរថា ខ្មែរបង្ហោះ ខ្លែងដែលមានឆ្អឹងធ្វើពីដើមបបុស តួខ្លែង ពាសដោយក្រដាស ហើយខ្លែងនោះបន្លឺ សម្លេងយ៉ាងពីរោះពេលហោះឡើងលើ អាកាស ។
ទោះបីមានការបង្ហោះខ្លែងឡើងវិញក៏ ដោយ ក៏ពុំមានព័ត៌មានឱ្យដឹងប្រាកដថា មហាក្សត្របានប្រារឰព្រះរាជពិធីបង្ហោះ ខ្លែងឡើយ ។
៦- រជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទស្រីសុរិយោពណ៍ (គ.ស ១៦០៣-១៦១៨)
ពីគ.ស ១៦០៣ ដល់១៦១៨ ក្នុងរជ្ជកាល ព្រះបរមរាជាស្រីសុរិយោពណ៍ មានព័ត៌មាន ឱ្យដឹងថា ព្រះមហាក្សត្របានប្រារឰព្រះរាជ ពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងឡើងវិញ ប៉ុន្ដែតាមជំនឿព្រះ ពុទ្ធសាសនា ។
៧-រជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទអង្គឌួង (គ.ស ១៨៤០-១៨៥៩)
ព្រះបាទអង្គឌួង ជាព្រះរាជាមួយអង្គ ប្រកបដោយទសពិធរាជធម៌ យកព្រះទ័យទុក ដាក់បំផុតខាងព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា និងរៀបចំឱ្យ មានសន្ដិភាពក្នុងប្រទេស ។ ព្រះអង្គបាន កសាងប្រទេសឡើងវិញ ដោយលើកតម្កើង ជីវភាពប្រជារាស្ដ្រ និងលើកផ្លូវមួយពីរាជ ធានីឧដុង្គទៅកំពតដើម្បីភ្ជាប់កំពង់ផែសមុទ្រ និងផ្លូវ មួយទៀតពីឧដុង្គទៅកំពង់ហ្លួង ដែល ជាកំពង់ផែដ៏សំខាន់តាមមាត់ទន្លេ ។ ក្នុងការ ការពារសម្បត្ដិធម្មជាតិ ព្រះអង្គបានហាមការ បរបាញ់សត្វ និងមិនឱ្យនេសាទត្រីដោយប្រើ ព្រួលរាំងពេញព្រែកឡើយ ។ ខាងវិស័យវប្ប ធម៌ ព្រះបាទអង្គឌួង បានបង្កើតសាលាតាម វត្ដជាច្រើន និងលើកទឹកចិត្ដអ្នកប្រាជ្ញកវី ដើម្បីជួយលើកតម្កើងអក្សរសាស្ដ្រខ្មែរ ។ ព្រះអង្គជាអ្នកនិពន្ធដ៏ឆ្នើមមួយរូប ខាងផ្នែក អក្សរសិល្ប៍ខ្មែរ ។
រៀង រាល់ឆ្នាំ ចាប់ពីថ្ងៃ ១២កើត ដល់ថ្ងៃ ១៥កើត ខែមិគសិរ នៅក្នុងវាំងនារាជធានី ឧដុង្គ ព្រះបាទអង្គឌួងតែងប្រារឰព្រះរាជពិធី បង្ហោះខ្លែងតាមបែបព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ដោយ មានសង់រោងពិធី៥អន្លើ ហើយនិមន្ដព្រះសង្ឃ រាជាគណៈចំរើនព្រះបរិត្ដនៅគ្រប់រោងទាំង ៥ ដែលមានតាំងគោម និងខ្លែងចំនួន៥ ។ ព្រះ រាជពិធីនេះ ប្រារឰឡើងដើម្បីឧទ្ទិសដល់ព្រះ ចូឡាមណីចេតិយ និងដើម្បីបួងសួងកុំឱ្យមាន ភ្លៀងឬទឹកជំនន់ក្នុងឱកាសច្រូតកាត់ ព្រម ទាំងដើម្បីសុភមង្គល និងសុខសន្ដិភាព សំរាប់ អ្នកស្រុកទូទាំងនគរខ្មែរ ។
ចាប់តាំងពីព្រះបាទអង្គឌួងសោយទិវង្គត នាឆ្នាំ១៨៥៩ទៅ ពិធីបង្ហោះខ្លែងពុំមានព្រះ មហាក្សត្រជំនាន់ក្រោយៗ រៀបចំជាព្រះរាជ ពិធីទៀតឡើយ ។ ប៉ុន្ដែសកម្មភាពបង្ហោះ ខ្លែង អ្នកស្រុកនៅតែបង្ហោះកំសាន្ដសប្បាយ នារដូវច្រូតកាត់រៀងរាល់ឆ្នាំរហូតដល់គ.ស ១៩៧០ ។
៨-សម័យ សង្គមរាស្ដ្រនិយម(គ.ស ១៩៥៣- ១៩៧០)នាគ.ស ១៨៦៣ គឺបួនឆ្នាំក្រោយពីព្រះ បាទអង្គឌួងសោយទិវង្គត នគរខ្មែរយើងបាន ធ្លាក់ក្រោមអាណាព្យាបាលបារាំង ។ ចាប់ពី ពេលនោះមក សកម្មភាពបង្ហោះខ្លែងរបស់ អ្នកស្រុកមិនទៀងទាត់ឡើយ ព្រោះកំរិតជីវ ភាពមិនសម្បូរសប្បាយ និងពុំមានសេរីភាព។ ប៉ុន្ដែព្រឹទ្ធាចារ្យ និងវត្ដលោកមានតួនាទីសំខាន់ ណាស់ក្នុងការថែរក្សាវប្បធម៌ជាតិ ក្នុងនោះ ក៏មានប្រពៃណីនៃការបង្ហោះខ្លែងផងដែរ ។ អ្នកស្រុកខ្មែរបានចំណាយពេលរងទុក្ខវេទនា ជិត១០០ឆ្នាំ រស់នៅក្រោមអាណាព្យាបាលរបស់បារាំង។
ថ្ងៃទី៩ វិច្ឆិកា ១៩៥៣ ប្រទេសជាតិទទួល បានឯករាជ្យឡើងវិញ ដោយសារស្នាព្រះ ហត្ថសម្ដេចព្រះឧបយុវរាជនរោត្ដមសីហនុ។ ចាប់ពីពេលនោះមកដល់គ.ស១៩៧០ ប្រទេស ជាតិមានការរីកចំរើនលើគ្រប់វិស័យ និង ល្បីពេញពិភពលោកថា ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រ កម្ពុជា ជាកោះសន្ដិភាព ។ វិស័យកសិកម្មមាន ការរីកចំរើន និងបាននាំចេញអង្ករទៅលក់នៅ បរទេសក្នុងមួយឆ្នាំ៥០០.០០០តោន ឯជីវភាពរបស់ប្រជារាស្ដ្រសម្បូរសប្បាយនិង ថ្លៃថ្នូរ ។ ដោយសារកសិកម្មមានការរីកចំរើន បែបនោះហើយ បានជាអ្នកស្រុកខ្មែររីករាយ នាំគ្នាបង្ហោះខ្លែងគ្រប់ប្រភេទនៅតាមវាល ស្រែចំការនារដូវច្រូតកាត់ និងក្រោយការច្រូត កាត់ ។ ពេលយប់ក្រោយពីបញ្ចប់ការបោក បែន អ្នកភូមិនាំគ្នាយកខ្លែងគោម ខ្លែងព្នង ទៅបង្ហោះ រួចហើយពួកគាត់ត្រឡប់មកដេក ស្ដាប់សម្លេងឯកតាមផ្ទះរៀងខ្លួន ឬប្រមូល គ្នាស្ដាប់សម្លេងឯកនៅទីណាមួយ ដោយមាន ដុតដំឡូង ឬក្រឡានទទួលទានយ៉ាងសប្បាយ ទៀតផង ។ ពេលថ្ងៃ កុមារា-កុមារីតែងនាំ គ្នាបង្ហោះខ្លែងកណ្ដូង ខ្លែងកន្ទោង ខ្លែងប្របៅ និងខ្លែងក្នស់ ដោយទឹកមុខញញឹមស្រស់ ។ ប៉ុន្ដែសង្គ្រាមជាងពីរទសវត្សចាប់តាំងពីឆ្នាំ ១៩៧០ ព្រមទាំងរបបខ្មែរក្រហមបានធ្វើឱ្យ អ្នកស្រុកខ្មែរអត់បាយ បែកបាក់ ស្លាប់ និង និរាសព្រាត់គ្រួសារ ។
វប្បធម៌ខ្មែររលត់ជាថ្មី ហើយសកម្មភាព បង្ហោះខ្លែងក៏បាត់បង់ទៅ ។
៩-ខ្លែងឯក ពីគ.ស ១៩៩៤-២០០៤
ឆ្នាំ១៩៩២ មានសេសសល់ព្រឹទ្ធាចារ្យ ចាស់ៗមួយចំនួនតូចដែលស្រឡាញ់ខ្លែង បាន ខិតខំធ្វើខ្លែងឯកបង្ហោះឡើងវិញ តែមានការ ប្រុងប្រយ័ត្នបំផុត ព្រោះតាមវាលស្រែចំការ មួយចំនួននៅមានសេសសល់គ្រាប់មីន ។ ថ្ងៃ ទី៣១ ខែធ្នូ ១៩៩៤ រដ្ឋមន្ដ្រីក្រសួងវប្បធម៌ និងវិចិត្រសិល្បៈ បានអនុញាតឱ្យរៀបចំ មហោស្រពខ្លែងលើកទី១ តាមគំនិតផ្ដួចផ្ដើម និងការស្នើសុំរបស់លោកស៊ឹម សារ៉ាក់ ដោយ ប្រមូលបានអ្នកស្នេហាខ្លែងចំនួន២៧នាក់ មកពីខេត្ដចំនួន៩ ជួបជុំគ្នានៅមាត់ទន្លេ បាសាក់(បច្ចុប្បន្នជាសួនច្បារសម្ដេចហ៊ុន សែន) រាជធានីភ្នំពេញ ។ ចាប់តាំងពីពេល នោះខ្លែងព្នងឬខ្លែងឯកបានរស់ឡើងវិញ ហើយមហោស្រពបង្ហោះខ្លែងក៏បានប្រារឰ ឡើងរៀងរាល់ឆ្នាំ ចាប់ពីឆ្នាំ១៩៩៩មកទល់ បច្ចុប្បន្ន ។ ខ្លែងឯកមិនត្រឹមតែបានរស់ឡើង វិញធ្វើឱ្យខ្មែរជំនាន់ក្រោយបានស្គាល់ និង ស្រឡាញ់ប៉ុណ្ណោះទេ ថែមទាំងបានផ្សព្វ ផ្សាយនូវនិមិត្ដរូប សន្ដិភាព សុភមង្គល និង ក្លាយជាអត្ដសញាណវប្បធម៌ខ្មែរហើយល្បី ល្បាញលើឆាកអន្ដរជាតិទៀតផង ។ ចាប់ ពីឆ្នាំ១៩៩៤មក ខ្លែងឯកបានចូលរួមមហោ ស្រពខ្លែងអន្ដរជាតិ ចំនួន១៧ដង ដូចជាមហោ ស្រពខ្លែងនៅប្រទេសបារាំង អ៊ីតាលី អង់គ្លេស ឥណ្ឌា ឥណ្ឌូណេស៊ី ម៉ាឡេស៊ី និងវៀតណាម ។
ការរស់ឡីងវិញនៃ ខ្លែងឯកជាការបញ្ជាក់ ថា មាតុភូមិកម្ពុជាមានសន្ដិភាព និង សុភមង្គលសំរាប់អ្នកស្រុកខ្មែរ ។
១០-លក្ខណសម្បត្ដិពិសេសរបស់ “ខ្លែងឯក”
ក-ខ្លែងឯកបំពាក់ដោយឯក ដែលជា ឧបករណ៍ភ្លេង បន្លឺបានច្រើនសម្លេងយ៉ាង ពីរោះ ពេលហោះឡើងលើអាកាស ។
ខ-ការ បង្ហោះខ្លែងឯកកំសាន្ដសប្បាយ គឺការបង្ហោះជាសហគមន៍ ។
គ-ពេល អ្នកស្រុកមានឱកាសបង្ហោះ ខ្លែង គឺបង្ហាញឱ្យដឹងថា អ្នកស្រុកមានសេរីភាព និង ប្រទេសជាតិមានសន្ដិភាព ។
ឃ-ខ្លែងឯក តំណាងឱ្យមានមាតាខ្មែរ ឬអ្នកដឹកនាំប្រទេសខ្មែរ ។
សមដូចព្រះរាជសម្ភារបានសរសេរក្នុង ច្បាប់ព្រះរាជនេតិនាសតវត្សទី១៧ “ខ្លែង ហើរដ្បិតខ្យល់ មេថ្កើងដ្បិតពល រក្សាឱ្យសុខ ទ្រព្យគ្រង់ដ្បិតស្រី ចេះសំចៃទុក ផ្ទះធំស្រណុក ដ្បិតភរិយាជា” ៕ (ដកចេញពីការសែតកោះសន្តិភាពថៃ្ងទី26/04/2010)

ប្រវតិ្តបុណ្យវិសាខបូជា(Visakha Bochea)

2010-04-25T20:53:00.001-07:00

ពិធីបុណ្យវិសាខបូជា គឺជាបុណ្យមួយយ៉ាងធំក្នុងព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា រាប់ថា ជាពុទ្ធានុស្សរណកិច្ចដ៏សំខាន់សំរាប់រំលឹកដល់ព្រះពុទ្ធសមណគោត្ដម បរមគ្រូ នាថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី (គីថ្ងៃ១៥កើត) ខែពិសាខ ដែលពុទ្ធសាស និកទាំងព្រះសង្ឃ ទាំងគ្រហស្ថ តែងធ្វើសក្ការបូជាប្រកបដោយជំនឿថា ជាមហាកុសលដ៏ប្រសើរ ។ ការដែលប្រារឰពិធីបូជានាថ្ងៃ១៥ កើត ខែពិសាខ នេះ អាស្រ័យដោយលោកអ្នកប្រាជ្ញខាងពុទ្ធសាសនា បានកំណត់ទុកក្នុងគម្ពីរបឋមសម្ពោធិថា ជាមហាមង្គល អភិ លក្ខិតកាល គឺជាថ្ងៃមហាមង្គល ត្រូវនឹងថ្ងៃដែលព្រះសម្ពុទ្ធបរមគ្រូ ៖
១- ទ្រង់ប្រសូតចាកឧទរមាតា
២-ទ្រង់ត្រាស់ដឹង អនុត្ដរសម្មាសម្ពោធិញ្ញាណ
៣-ទ្រង់រំលត់ខន្ធចូលកាន់ព្រះបរម និព្វាន
សម្ដេចព្រះបរមសាស្ដ្រាចារ្យរបស់យើង ទ្រង់ប្រសូត ត្រាស់ដឹង និងបរិនិព្វាន សុទ្ធតែក្នុងថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែពិសាខ ទាំងអស់ប្លែក តែឆ្នាំប៉ុណ្ណោះ ។ ព្រោះហេតុនោះហើយបានជាអ្នកប្រាជ្ញចងក្រងជាគាថាទុកដូច្នេះថា ៖អាសាឡ្ហបុណ្ណមោក្កន្ដោ វិសាខេ យេវ និក្ខមិ វិសាខបុណ្ណមី សម្ពុទ្ធោ វិសាខេ បរិនិឰុតោ
សេចក្ដីថា ៖ ព្រះពុទ្ធយាងចុះកាន់គភ៌នៃព្រះវរមាតា ក្នុងថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែអាសាធ ទ្រង់ប្រសូតក្នុងថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែពិសាខ បានត្រាស់ដឹងជាព្រះពុទ្ធក្នុងថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែពិសាខ និងទ្រង់ចូលបរិនិព្វាន ក៏ថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែពិសាខ (ផ្សេងតែឆ្នាំ) ។ ជាប្រពៃណី ពិធីវិសាខបូជា គេតែងនាំគ្នា ធ្វើក្នុងវេលារាត្រី ព្រោះតម្រូវទៅតាមពាក្យថា “បុណ្ណមី” មានសេចក្ដីថា ខែពេញបូណ៌មី ។
ម្យ៉ាងទៀតការប្រារឰពិធីក្នុងពេលរាត្រី អាស្រ័យដោយលក្ខណៈងាយស្រួល២យ៉ាង គឺម្យ៉ាងដើម្បីនឹងបានឱកាសអុជគ្រឿងប្រទីប ជ្វាលា បូជាភ្លើងអគ្គិសនីឱ្យភ្លឺរុងរឿងរន្ទាល ច្រាលឆ្អៅផង និងម្យ៉ាងទៀតដើម្បីបើកឱកាសឱ្យពុទ្ធបរិស័ទបានជួបជុំគ្នាដ៏ច្រើន កុះករទាំងប្រុស ទាំងស្រី អាចបំពេញកុសលកម្មនេះ ដោយសប្បាយរីករាយ ព្រោះពេលយប់ជាវេលាទំនេរផង ។
ពិធីវិសាខបូជាចាត់ទុកថា ជាបុណ្យដ៏ធំ ដោយមានមហាជនប្រជាជន ចាស់ ក្មេង ប្រុស ស្រី នៅជុំគ្នាអ៊ូអូរ ដោយនាំទៅជាមួយនូវគ្រឿងសក្ការបូជា មានទៀន ធូប ផ្កា ភ្ញី និងប្រទីបជ្វាលាតូច-ធំ អុជបំភ្លឺព្រោង ព្រាត នៅគ្រប់វត្ដអារាម ។ និយាយរួមការធ្វើបុណ្យវិសាខបូជាគឺដើម្បីរំលឹកដល់ថ្ងៃដែលជាមហា មង្គលអភិលក្ខិតកាលទាំង៣ ដូចពោលខាងលើ ។ រីឯ ពិធីដែលធ្វើកំណត់ថា ត្រឹមត្រូវ គឺត្រូវមាន ការសម្ដែងរឿងពុទ្ធប្បវត្ដិ តាំងអំពីដើមរហូត ដល់ចប់ ដើម្បីជាគ្រឿងបណ្ដុះបសាទសទ្ធាឱ្យ កើតមាន ក្នុងគុណព្រះពុទ្ធ ព្រះធម៌ ព្រះសង្ឃ ឱ្យខ្លាំងក្លាឡើង ។ ពិធីដែលប្រជាជនខ្មែរយើងធ្លាប់ធ្វើរួចហើយចាត់ទុកជាបែបដែលល្អ និងសមស្របទៅនឹងប្រពៃណីពីបុរាណ ។
ប្រភពកំណើតនៃវិសាខបូជា
- តើប្រទេសណាជាអ្នកចាប់ផ្ដើមធ្វើ បុណ្យវិសាខបូជានេះមុនគេ?
-តើ ប្រទេសកម្ពុជាយើងចាប់ផ្ដើមធ្វើ បុណ្យវិសាខបូជាពីត្រឹមពេលណាមក?
នៅ ពេលដែលពុទ្ធបរិស័ទក្នុងប្រទេសគោរពប្រតិបត្ដិពុទ្ធសាសនា ទាំងឡាយបានជ្រួតជ្រាបអំពីអភិលក្ខិតកាលនិយម គឺថ្ងៃ ប្រសូត ត្រាស់ដឹង និងបរិនិព្វានរបស់ព្រះសម្មាសម្ពុទ្ធថា សុទ្ធតែនៅថ្ងៃពេញបូណ៌មី ខែ វិសាខ ហើយក៏នាំគ្នាធ្វើពិធីវិសាខបូជាជារៀងរហូតតាំងពីបុរាណកាលមក ។
តាមការស្រាវជ្រាវឃើញថា ការធ្វើពិធីវិសាខបូជានេះ ពុំមែនធ្វើក្រោយព្រះពុទ្ធបរិនិព្វានទៅថ្មីៗនោះទេ គឺធ្វើក្រោយពេលដែលព្រះពុទ្ធបរមគ្រូទ្រង់បរិនិព្វានកន្លងទៅជាច្រើន រយឆ្នាំ ។
បញ្ជាក់ ៖ បុណ្យវិសាខបូជាត្រូវបានអង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិទទួលស្គាល់ចំពោះបណ្ដាប្រទេស កាន់ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាលើសាកលលោក ក្នុងនោះមានប្រទេសកម្ពុជាផងដែរ តាំងពីឆ្នាំ២០០០មកម្ល៉េះ ។
ចំណែកប្រទេសកម្ពុជា ដែលមានព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា បានមកប្រតិស្ឋានតាំងពីដំបូង ហើយស្ថិតនៅជាប្រទេសមានឥស្សរភាពជាយូរណាស់មកហើយ តែបើតាមការស្រាវជ្រាវ ពិនិត្យមើលក្នុងព្រះរាជពង្សាវតារ ឬក្នុងសេចក្ដីកំណត់ហេតុផ្សេងៗតាំងពីសម័យនគរភ្នំ “ហ្វូណន” រហូតមកដល់សម័យក្រុងលង្វែក មិនប្រាកដថា មានទំនៀមធ្វើវិសាខ បូជាឡើយ ។ តែបើយោងទៅលើសេចក្ដីថា ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាលទ្ធិលង្កា បានផ្សាយចូលមក កម្ពុជរដ្ឋក្នុងសម័យជាមួយគ្នានឹងក្រុងសុខោ ទ័យ គួរសន្និដ្ឋានបានថា មានទំនៀមធ្វើវិសាខ បូជារួចមកហើយ ដូចជាប្រទេសថៃដែរ តែ កម្ពុជាយើងពុំឃើញមានឯកសារជាភស្ដុតាង ឬក៏មានដែរ តែត្រូវរលាយសាបសូន្យអស់ ទៅ ។
លុះចំណេរយូរលង់មក គឺក្នុងសម័យក្រុង អយុធ្យាខាងថៃ និងក្នុងសម័យក្រុងលង្វែក ខាងខ្មែរ ទំនៀមទំលាប់ធ្វើវិសាខបូជា ត្រឡប់ជាសាបសូន្យទៅវិញ ដូចជា ភ្លេច សូន្យឈឹងទាំងស្រុង ព្រោះមិនមានប្រាកដ ក្នុងឯកសារណាមួយថា បានធ្វើឡើយ ។ ទាំងនេះព្រោះហេតុអ្វី?
តាមការសន្និដ្ឋានឃើញថា
១- ព្រោះព្រះសង្ឃអំពីលង្កានោះផុត រលត់អស់ទៅ
២-ព្រោះរឿង បឋមសម្ពោធិកថា ស្ដ្ដីពី រឿងពុទ្ធប្រវត្ដិក្នុងពេលនោះ មានតែភាសា បាលី ហើយនៅរាត់រាយក្នុងគម្ពីរព្រះត្រៃបិដក ខ្លះក្នុងអដ្ឋកថា ខ្លះពុំទាន់ចងក្រងរួបរួម និងពុំទាន់បានប្រែរៀបរៀងជាភាសាសំរាប់ជាតិនៅឡើយ ។ រីឯអ្នកស្រុកក៏ពុំទាន់ជ្រួតជ្រាបជាទូទៅគ្រប់គ្នា មានតែព្រះសង្ឃ ដែលចេះភាសាបាលី ទើបអាចដឹងបានខ្លះ ព្រោះហេតុនេះហើយទើបពិធីបុណ្យវិសាខបូជា ត្រូវបានសាបសូន្យទៅវិញ ។
ចំណេរ ក្រោយមកប្រទេសថៃក្នុងសម័យ ក្រុងទេព “បាងកក” តាមសេចក្ដីដែលមានក្នុងសៀវភៅព្រះរាជពិធីស៊ិបសងដឿនថា ក្នុងរជ្ជកាលទី២ ក្នុងឆ្នាំឆ្លូវ នព្វស័ក ពុទ្ធសក រាជ២៣៦០ គ្រិស្ដសករាជ១៨១៧ ទើបកើតមានពិធីវិសាខបូជា ដោយពេលនោះ មានសម្ដេចព្រះសង្ឃរាជ១ព្រះអង្គព្រះនាម “មី” នៅវត្ដរាជបូរណៈមកថ្វាយព្រះពរសុំឱ្យទ្រង់ធ្វើវិសាខបូជាជាដំបូង ។ ឯរបៀបធ្វើពិធីក៏ប្រហាក់ប្រហែលគ្នានឹងរបៀបធ្វើនៅក្នុងក្រុង សុខោទ័យ ប៉ុន្ដែមិនសូវជាអធិកអធមដូចគ្រានោះទេ ។
ចំណែកនៅប្រទេស កម្ពុជាវិញ ក្នុងសម័យជាមួយគ្នានេះ ប្រហែលជាមិនទាន់មានទំនៀមធ្វើនៅឡើយ ដោយហេតុថា ការធ្វើ វិសាខបូជានៅប្រទេសថៃក្នុងជំនាន់នោះនៅមិនទាន់មាំមួននៅឡើយ ទាំងគម្ពីរបឋមសម្ពោធិ ដែលសំរាប់ប្រើប្រាស់ក្នុងការនេះ ក៏មិនទាន់មាននៅឡើយដែរ ហើយទំនងជាមិនទាន់បានជ្រួតជ្រាបដល់ប្រជាជនខ្មែរផង ។
ឯគម្ពីរ បឋមសម្ពោធិជារឿងពុទ្ធប្រវត្ដិដំណាលរឿងចាប់ផ្ដើមតាំងពីព្រះអង្គចុះ ចាកតុសិតទេវលោក មកយកកំណើតជាព្រះរាជបុត្រព្រះបាទសុទ្ធោទនៈ និងព្រះនាងមហាមាយានៅនគរកបិលពស្ដុ ក្នុងមជ្ឈិមប្រទេសរៀងរាបដរាបដល់ទ្រង់បានត្រាស់ជាអង្គព្រះពុទ្ធ ប្រោសសត្វ ហើយស្ដេចទ្រង់រំលត់ខន្ធចូលកាន់ព្រះបរមនិព្វានជាទីបំផុត ។
គម្ពីរបឋមសម្ពោធិនេះ អ្នកប្រាជ្ញតែងឡើងសំរាប់ប្រើប្រាស់ទេសនានៅក្នុងបុណ្យវិសាខបូជា ។ ព្រោះថាការដែលនាំយកប្រវត្ដិរបស់រឿងនេះមកសម្ដែង ដើម្បីជាភស្ដុតាងបញ្ជាក់ឱ្យដឹងថា វិសាខបូជាកើតឡើងពិតប្រាកដនោះពីត្រឹមពេលដែលកើតគម្ពីរនេះឡើង ។ គម្ពីរនេះកើតមានប្រាកដឡើងនៅប្រទេសថៃ ក្នុងរជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទសម្ដេចព្រះណាំងក្លៅ “រជ្ជកាលទី៣” ជាដំបូង ហើយក្នុង ជំនាន់នោះគម្ពីរនេះមាន២ប្រភេទគឺ ៖
១-បឋមសម្ពោធិ សង្ខេបមាន២០បរិច្ឆេទ មិនមានឈ្មោះអ្នកនិពន្ធពិតប្រាកដទេ ប្រហែលជានិពន្ធឡើងក្នុងរជ្ជកាលទី២ ។
២-បឋមសម្ពោធិវិត្ថារ ជាភាសាមគធៈមាន២១ខ្សែ ឬ៣០បរិច្ឆេទទាំងជាភាសាបាលី និងសម្រាយ ។
ព្រះបាទ សម្ដេចព្រះណាំងក្លៅ ទ្រង់អារាធនាសម្ដេចក្រុមព្រះបរមានុជិត ជិនោរស សង្ឃរាជនៅវត្ដព្រះជេតព័ន ក្នុងក្រុងទេពឱ្យនិពន្ធឡើង ។ សម្ដេចក្រុមព្រះអង្គនេះបាន រួបរួមសេចក្ដីចេញពីគម្ពីរផ្សេងៗ និងនិពន្ធ បន្ថែមឡើងខ្លះក្នុងពុទ្ធសករាជ២៣៨៧ គ្រិស្ដ សករាជ១៨៤៥ ។
ចំណែក ប្រទេសខ្មែរយើង គម្ពីរបឋម សម្ពោធិជាភាសាមគធៈ មាន២១ខ្មែរ ឬ៣០ បរិច្ឆេទ ។ គម្ពីរជាសំរាយមាន៣បែបគឺ១ ហៅថា បឋមសម្ពោធិសង្ខេប ឬហៅថា “បឋមត្រាស់” មាន៥-៦ខ្សែ ឬមួយខ្សែចប់ ពណ៌នាសេចក្ដីតាំងពីព្រះអង្គយាងចុតិចាកតុសិត មកចាប់បដិសន្ធិជាឱរសព្រះបាទសុទ្ធោ ទនៈ និងព្រះនាងសិរិមហាមាយា រហូតមកត្រឹមព្រះអង្គចេញទ្រង់ព្រះផ្នួស បានត្រាស់ជាព្រះពុទ្ធ ។ អត្ថបទនេះមិនដឹងជាអ្នកណាជា អ្នកនិពន្ធ ហើយនិពន្ធពីក្នុងពុទ្ធសករាជណា ទេ ។ តែតាមការសង្កេតមើលពាក្យពេចន៍ ក្នុងគម្ពីរនោះ ឃើញថា មិនជាចាស់ណាស់ ណាទេ យ៉ាងយូរណាស់ត្រឹមសម័យក្រុងឧដុង្គ ខាងដើម ។ គម្ពីរនេះគេច្រើនប្រើសំរាប់ ទេសនាក្នុងពិធីបុណ្យអភិសេកព្រះពុទ្ធរូប ផង ។
គម្ពីរទី២ ហៅថា បឋមសម្ពោធិវិត្ថារ មាន៣០បរិច្ឆេទ ។ គម្ពីរនេះសម្ដេចព្រះ មហាសុមេធាធិបតី ព្រះសង្ឃរាជជួន ណាត (កាលនៅជាសង្ឃនាយក) បានមានថេរដីកា ថា មហាណាក មហាភូ និងអាចារ្យសន ។ល។ នៅខេត្ដបាត់ដំបង បានប្រែចេញពី បឋមសម្ពោធិវិត្ថាររបស់សម្ដេចក្រុមព្រះ បរមានុជិត ជិនោរស ក្នុងសម័យព្រះយ៉ាកថា ថន “តទាធរ” ឈុម ធ្វើជាចៅមឿងបាត់ ដំបង ហើយដែលបានផ្សព្វផ្សាយ ។
នៅប្រទេសកម្ពុជា
បុណ្យ វិសាខបូជា តាមដែលចាស់ទុំអ្នក មុខអ្នកការទាំងឡាយតំណាលតៗគ្នាបានឱ្យ ដឹងថា គេបានផ្ដើមធ្វើក្នុងរជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទ សម្ដេចព្រះហរិរក្សរាមាឥស្សរាធិបតី “ព្រះ អង្គឌួង” ដែលគង់នៅក្នុងឧដុង្គជាដំបូងព្រោះ ថា កាលក្នុងពុទ្ធសករាជ២៣៩៧ គ្រិស្ដសក រាជ១៨៥៤ សម្ដេចព្រះអង្គឌួង ទ្រង់សព្វព្រះ រាជហឫទ័យស្នើសុំទូទៅក្នុងកម្ពុជរដ្ឋ ។
គម្ពីរទី៣ ហៅថា “បឋមសម្ពោធិកថា” គឺ បឋមសម្ពោធិវិត្ថារនោះឯងដែលព្រះឥន្ទមុនី “ប៉ែន” គង់នៅវត្ដបទុមវតី ក្រុងភ្នំពេញ ប្រែ និងរៀបរៀងចេញពីច្បាប់របស់សម្ដេចព្រះ មហាសង្ឃរាជ “សា” ក្នុងរជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទ សម្ដេចព្រះស៊ីសុវត្ថិ មាន៣០បរិច្ឆេទ ដូច ច្បាប់ដើម ។ គម្ពីរនេះមានជាបែបបទសំរាប់ ទេសនាក្នុងថ្ងៃវិសាខបូជា ក្នុងវត្ដគណៈធម្ម យុត្ដិកនិកាយទូទាំងប្រទេសខ្មែរ ។
ការធ្វើ វិសាខបូជា ក្នុងសម័យរជ្ជកាលទី២ នោះ ប្រហែលជាមានធ្វើតែក្នុងក្រុង មិនទាន់ បានផ្សព្វផ្សាយទៅគ្រប់វត្ដអារាមនៅឡើយ ទេ ហើយក៏មិនទាន់មានភាពឱឡារិកអធិក អធមដែរ ។
ពុទ្ធសាសនិកប្រទេសថៃ បានអះអាងថា ប្រពៃណីធ្វើវិិសាខបូជាដែលត្រឹមត្រូវតាម លក្ខណៈ កើតមានឡើងតាំងពីត្រឹមរជ្ជកាលទី ៤ ដោយព្រះរាជាអង្គនេះជាអ្នកប្រាជ្ញក្នុងផ្លូវ ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ទ្រង់ចេះគម្ពីរព្រះត្រៃបិដក ជ្រៅជ្រះ ទ្រង់បានផ្ដើមធ្វើវិសាខបូជាតាំងពី កាលទ្រង់ព្រះផ្នួសនៅឡើយ ។ លុះដល់ទ្រង់ ដាក់ព្រះផ្នួសមកទទួលរាជសម្បត្ដិក៏ទ្រង់នៅ តែបន្ដធ្វើវិសាខបូជារៀងដរាបមក រហូតដល់ ទ្រង់បញ្ជាឱ្យរៀបចំគម្ពីរសំរាប់ទេសនាក្នុង ពិធីបុណ្យនេះដូចបានពោលខាងលើ ។ ព្រះ មហាប៉ាន គឺសម្ដេចព្រះសុគន្ធាធិបតី ជាគណៈ ធម្មយុត្ដិកនិកាយនៅក្រុងទេព “បាងកក” អំពីព្រះបាទសម្ដេចព្រះចមក្លៅ “រជ្ជកាលទី៤” ។
បន្ទាប់ មកក្រោយនោះមួយឆ្នាំគឺក្នុងពុទ្ធ សករាជ២៣៩៨ ព្រះមហាប៉ាន ទើបនិមន្ដមក អំពីក្រុងទេព ព្រះបាទសម្ដេចព្រះហរិរក្ស ទ្រង់មានព្រះរាជហឫទ័យសោមនស្សណាស់ ហើយបាននិមន្ដឱ្យគង់នៅជាចៅអធិការវត្ដ សាលាគូ ហៅវត្ដអម្ពិលបី នៅក្រុងឧដុង្គ តរៀងមក ។ ដោយហេតុថា ព្រះមហាថេរ អង្គនេះ កាលដែលលោកគង់នៅទីក្រុងទេព ធ្លាប់ធ្វើវិសាខបូជារួចមកហើយ ហើយកាល បានគង់នៅប្រទេសខ្មែរ ព្រមទាំងបានធ្វើជាធំ ក្នុងគណៈធម្មយុត្ដិកនិកាយផង លោកក៏ផ្ដើម ឡើងតាមដែលធ្លាប់ធ្វើកន្លងមក ។ ប៉ុន្ដែ យើងពុំបានដឹងច្បាស់ថា នៅពេលដំបូងនោះ តើលោកចាប់ផ្ដើមធ្វើក្នុងឆ្នាំណា សករាជ ប៉ុន្មាននោះទេ ព្រោះគ្មានឯកសារជាក់ស្ដែង គ្រាន់តែមានសេចក្ដីអះអាងពីអ្នកមុខអ្នកការ ទាំងឡាយថា ប្រាកដជាមានធ្វើវិសាខបូជា តាំងពីក្នុងពេលដែលលោកគង់នៅក្រុងឧដុង្គ មកម្ល៉េះ ។ លុះដល់ពេលលោកមកគង់នៅវត្ដ បទុមវតី ក្រុងភ្នំពេញ ក្នុងពុទ្ធសករាជ២៤០៨ ក៏បានប្រារឰវិសាខបូជារហូតដល់អស់ព្រះ
ជន្ម ។ ពិធីវិសាខបូជាត្រូវបានផ្សព្វផ្សាយ ទូទៅនៅគ្រប់វត្ដគណៈធម្មយុត្ដិកនិកាយជាប់ ជាទំនៀមរហូតមក ។
ចំណែក វត្ដខាងមហានិកាយ ទើបមានធ្វើ ក្នុងសម័យក្រុងភ្នំពេញ ក្នុងរជ្ជកាលព្រះ ស៊ីសុវត្ថិ ។ តាមដែលសម្ដេចព្រះមហាសុមេ ធាធិបតីព្រះសង្ឃរាជជួន ណាត “កាលនៅ ព្រះសង្ឃនាយក” ដំណាលថា ក្នុងឆ្នាំមួយ នោះលោកគ្រូព្រះវនរ័ត ចន្ទ គង់នៅវត្ដឧណ្ណា លោម បាននិមន្ដទៅក្រុងទេព ឃើញព្រះ សង្ឃនៅក្រុងនោះ ទាំងគណៈធម្មយុត្ដិកនិ កាយ ទាំងគណៈមហានិកាយ ធ្វើវិសាខបូជា ក៏កើតជ្រះថ្លានៅពេលនិមន្ដត្រឡប់មកវិញ បានក្រាបបង្គំទូលសម្ដេចព្រះមហាសង្ឃរាជ “ព្រះនាមទៀង” សុំឱ្យធ្វើវិសាខបូជា សម្ដេច ព្រះមហាសង្ឃរាជទៀង ក៏ទ្រង់បានព្រះរាជា នុញាតតាមសំណូមពរ ទើបវិសាខបូជាត្រូវ បានធ្វើជាបន្ដបន្ទាប់រៀងដរាបមក ។ ប៉ុន្ដែ ពេលនោះក៏ពុំទាន់បានធ្វើគ្រប់វត្ដនៅឡើយ គឺមានធ្វើចំពោះតែវត្ដនៅក្នុងក្រុង ។ ឯវត្ដ នៅតាមខេត្ដក្រៅមានធ្វើតែវត្ដធំៗ វត្ដតូចៗ ច្រើនពុំបានធ្វើនៅឡើយ ។
ចំណែកព្រះមហាក្សត្រដែនដី តាំងពីរជ្ជ កាលព្រះបាទសម្ដេចព្រះហរិរក្ស “ព្រះអង្គ ឌួង” មកសុទ្ធតែទ្រង់ជ្រះថ្លាបានទទួលធ្វើ គ្រប់ៗព្រះអង្គ ។
តាម ឯកសារបានលើកសរសើរព្រះគុណ សម្បត្ដិ ព្រះបាទសម្ដេចព្រះហរិរក្ស ដែលជា អ្នកផ្ដួចផ្ដើមធ្វើវិសាខបូជាឡើងជាដំបូង ព្រោះរាជាអង្គនេះទ្រង់ធ្លាប់ទៅគង់នៅក្រុង ទេព “បាងកក” និងទ្រង់ធ្លាប់សាងព្រះផ្នួស នៅទីនោះ ។ ទ្រង់បានសិក្សាព្រះបរិយត្ដិធម៌ ជ្រួតជ្រាបគម្ពីរព្រះត្រៃបិដកជ្រៅជ្រះ ។ នៅ ពេលដែលទ្រង់បានឡើងសោយរាជសម្បត្ដិ ក៏ទ្រង់ផ្ដើមធ្វើពិធីបុណ្យនេះតាមដែលទ្រង់ ធ្លាប់បានជ្រួតជ្រាប និងធ្លាប់បានទតឃើញ របៀបបែបផែន ដែលគេធ្វើនៅក្រុងទេព ទើបជាប់ជាប្រពៃណីរហូតមកដល់សព្វថ្ងៃ ៕ (ដកស្រង់ចេញពីសៀវភៅគណៈកម្មការរៀបចំបុណ្យជាតិ និងអន្តរជាតិ និងសៀវភៅវប្បធម៍ទូទៅសំរាប់សិស្សប្រលងចូលមហាវិទ្យាល័យ និងការសែតកោះសន្តិភាព)

Heathy Care : Belief and Practices

2010-01-28T02:08:00.000-08:00

Cambodian People are as comfortable using medicine as they are using traditional or indigenous healing practices. Many Khmer believe that illness may be attributed to an imbalance in nature. A common expression of this concept is for people to note the influence of "wind " or "kchall " on blood circulation and thus on illness. There may also be discussion of body condition called "cold " or "hot". These are not necessarily temperatures, but rather, body states leading to or caused by illness or other changes such as childbirth.

For a variety of reasons, many Khmer are slow to seek care from western practitioners and often traditional measures are tried first. Some of the following procedures are carried out by family members and some by traditional healers or kruu khmer. Some kruu khmer specialize in medicinal practice with a spiritual component. Regardless of who carries out the procedures m they are usually accompanied by prayer and other spiritual activities.

Koo'kchall is used to treat many different ailment, including fever, respiratory infections, nausea, heart complaints, and malaise, To practice Koo' kchall a coin is dipped in a mentholated medicine and rubbed vigorously on the skin, away from the center of the body. This is referred to as " coining " or " dermabrasion " The treatment essentially induces a hematoma , leaving the patient with deep red marks on the skin, which disappear after a few weeks.

Jub kchall or pinching is used to treat headach and malaise. The Jub treatment involves pinching the bridge of the nose, neck, or chest leaving small bruises.
The Practice of " cupping " is very popular in Cambodia and involves the placement of a small lit candle on the forehead and placing a small jar over the candle. The flame consumes the Oxygen and creates a vacuum, thus causing a circular contusion on the skin.

Traditional or natural medicines include a wide variety of plant ( leaves, bark and extracts )and other substance use singly or in combination with the another . They may be used topically or rally.
Magico-religious articles such as amulets, strings, and Buddha images are also commonly used to treat ailments. Katha (blessed pieces of string ) are commonly worn around the neck by children or around the waist by adults. Other types of amulets include small pieces of metal inscribed with sacred word written in the Pali script and rolled around string , Buddha images attached to a gold chain, and braided knotted string (with the knots incorporating magical substance). Amulets attain their power from prayers or incantations, from the words inscribed in the metal portion , fro
m the material from which they are made, or from other attributes. Magical picture and words called yuan may also be employed to keep bad spirits at bay. These picture are often painted on a piece of cloth and placed in one's pocket or place over the doorways in the home. Another preventative measure
e are tattoos, which will ward off sickness or danger. Pali writing and sacred image are tattooed onto the skin, usually on the chest and arms.

All these techniques may be combined with more modern medicines but are often favored for the first attempt at curing an illness.

Spirit House

2010-01-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

Many visitors to Cambodia are Left Puzzled by the presence of spirit house. These small shrines are seen throughout the country, and look like tiny temple mounted on pillars. They are used both Buddhists and animist minorities in order to show respect to the recently departed. Buddhists believe that leaving offerings at the spirit houses wishes luck in the next life for the recently deceased, who are awaiting reincarnation in the underworld . In doing so, they also believe that they are giving themselves good luck. Such as, it is not uncommon to see spirit house at businesses and homes throughout Southeast Asia.

The ethnic minority followers of animism in the more remote parts of Cambodia also believe in the use of spirit houses. However, the spirit houses play a much more significant role in their lives. According to animist traditions, the recently departed must exist as spirits in the forests until they are reincarnated. They take great care in not offending the spirits, as they believe that unfortunate even such as disease are caused by angered spirits. Thus they leave offerings at the spirit houses in hopes of remedying illness, often in lieu of seeking medical treatment.

TOP TEN UNWRITTEN RULES
1. Don't Touch Heads : Seen as the highest and holiest part of the body, to touch someone's head, especially that of someone older than you is extremely rude, and an act of disrespect.

2. Bend Before your Elders: When an elder is seated, and you have to walk past them it is customary to bow your heads and stoop slightly as you cross their path as a sign of respect.

3. Use Both Hands : Unlike is some countries where the left hand is unused , here it is polite to use both when passing something over, and accepting something. It shows your full willingness to give and gratefulness to receive.

4. An Extended Family: When addressing those older than you it is impolite to use first names. Those older must be called "uncle or aunt ...." as it shows a welcoming of the family.

5. Dont Step Over : If in the theatre or a crowded corridor, even in a train or coach, it is extremely inappropriate to try and step over people. Allowances will be made to allow you room to get through, so be patient, and don't attempt to climb over anyone's laps.

6. Don't Give a Little Whistle : The shape of the face, and the brazen confidence exuded when whistling is considered rude throughout Cambodia. Women in particular must never whistle in public, or sing out lout when not in a Karaoke bar.

7. No Straddling : Although exceptions are made for tourists, it is not customary for a woman to sit astride a motobike, and so where it is possible one should always sit sidesaddle.

8. Don't Cross Your Arms : Not meant in the traditional sense, crossing your arm over someone else's at a table when reaching for food is impolite. It's better to simply wait, and then ask for it to be passed, or reach out when you are alone in doing so.

9. The Packing Order
The roads in Phnom Penh are nothing if not alarming. The only rule that really seems to stick is 'size does matter '. The bigger vehicle always gets right of way and motors are bottom on the pecking order.

10. No Going Dutch : Be aware when inviting locals for a meal that the "host"usually pays for the bill. Although if dining with western ex-pats some do not stick to this rule.

Robam Preah Reach Trob

2009-12-11T20:54:00.001-08:00

របាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ គឺជាមរតកវប្បធម៌ខ្មែរដែលកាត់ថ្លៃពុំបាន !
ភ្នំពេញ : ជាតិសាសន៍នីមួយៗ មុនបានក្លាយទៅជាជាតិសាសន៍ លុះត្រាតែមានវប្បធម៌ អារ្យធម៌របស់ខ្លួនផ្ទាល់ បើពុំដូច្នោះទេនឹងពុំអាចរក្សានូវអត្តសញ្ញាណដើមរបស់ជាតិខ្លួនបានឡើយ ពោលគឺសតិសម្បជញ្ញៈជាតិ ដែលជាការចងចាំមួយដែលមានលក្ខណៈជាប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រ ។
នាដើមសតវត្សរ៍ទី១ នៃគ្រិស្តសករាជជាតិសាសន៍ខ្មែរបានទទួលឥទ្ធិពលវប្បធម៌ឥណ្ឌាតាមរយៈវិស័យពាណិជ្ជកម្មអន្តរជាតិ ហើយបានកែច្នៃប្រឌិតនូវអ្វីៗដែលមកពីក្រៅ ដើម្បីឲ្យសមស្របតាមប្រពៃណីទម្រង់ ឬខ្នាតវប្បធម៌ អារ្យធម៌ជាតិរបស់ខ្លួន ។ កត្តានេះជាគ្រឹះមូលដ្ឋាននៃដួងវិញ្ញាណជាតិ ព្រោះជាសញ្ញាសម្គាល់នូវលក្ខណៈសំយោគពិសេសរបស់វប្បធម៌នៃជាតិសាសន៍ខ្មែរ ។
ក្នុងន័យនេះ របាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ក៏ដូចរបាំប្រពៃណីជាតិមួយចំនួនឯទៀតដែរ ដែលកើតឡើងក្នុងអតីតកាលដ៏យូរលង់ ត្រូវបានជាតិសាសន៍ខ្មែរ ថែរក្សាឲ្យបានគង់វង្សរហូតដល់សព្វថ្ងៃ ។ ទាំងនេះជាមរតកវប្បធម៌ខ្មែរ ដែលកាត់ថ្លៃពុំបាន ។ ថ្វីត្បិតតែសិល្បករ សិល្បការិនីពីជំនាន់មួយទៅជំនាន់មួយ ត្រូវផ្លាស់ប្តូរជាបន្តបន្ទាប់ក៏ដោយ ក៏ប៉ុន្តែបច្ចេកទេសសិល្បៈនៃរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ពុំបានផ្លាស់ប្តូរ ឬកែទម្រង់ឡើយ ។
លោកបណ្ឌិត មីសែល ត្រាណេ បានស្រាវជ្រាវរកឃើញថា ប្រកពនៃរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យខ្មែរ ត្រូវផ្សារភ្ជាប់ទៅនឹងប្រាង្គប្រាសាទ និងចម្លាក់សិលានៃអតីតព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជាទាំងមូល ដែលមានទឹកដីដ៏មហាធំធេងអស្ចារ្យ ហើយម្យ៉ាងទៀត ឫសកែវនៃរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ត្រូវផ្សារភ្ជាប់នឹងរបបរាជានិយម និងព្រហ្មមញ្ញសាសនា ដោយហេតុថា មរតកអរូបីនេះ គឺជាមធ្យោបាយពង្រឹងអំណាចកិត្យានុភាព និងព្រះជ័យចេស្តារបស់ព្រះមហាក្សត្រខ្មែរបុរាណ ។ កាយវិការ និងក្បាច់រាំ ព្រមទាំងសម្លៀកបំពាក់របស់អ្នករាំ ឬស្រីទេពអប្សរជាដើមនាសម័យបច្ចុប្បន្ននេះ អាចប្រដូចស្ទើរតែគ្រប់ជ្រុងជ្រោយទាំងអស់ ទៅនឹងឥរិយាបថនៃចម្លាក់បុរាណ នៅលើជញ្ជាំងប្រាសាទអង្គរវត្ត បាយ័ន នៅសៀមរាប ឬប្រាសាទភិមាឃនៅថៃសព្វថ្ងៃ ។ រីឯរបាំ និងតូរ្យតន្ត្រីវិញ ក៏មានលក្ខណៈបុរាណដែរ ។
និយាយអំពីប្រភពនៃរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យខ្មែរដឹងថា ដើមឡើយរបាំនេះមានលក្ខណៈពិសិដ្ឋ ដែលត្រូវបានប្រារឰឡើង ដើម្បីជាតង្វាយថ្វាយទៅ ចំពោះព្រះអាទិទេពដូចនៅប្រទេសឥណ្ឌា ដែលគេសម្តែងឈុតសាសនាមួយចំនួនទៅអាទិទេព ដែលទាក់ទិនទៅនឹងប្រវត្តិសាវតាររបស់ទេវតានៃព្រហ្មមញ្ញសាសនា ។ បន្ទាប់មកទៀតរបាំប្រពៃណីនេះ ក៏ត្រូវប្រារឰឡើងដើម្បីសម្តែងបង្ហាញបញ្ជាក់នូវទេវកថាទាក់ទិនទៅនឹងព្រះមហាក្សត្រ ដែលគេប្រៀបផ្ទឹមទៅនឹងចេស្តារបស់ព្រះអាទិទេព ឬមហាវីរបុរសជាតិ ដែលបានការពារទឹកដីវប្បធម៌ អារ្យធម៌ជាតិ ។ ពោលគឺរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ឬរបាំហ្លួង (ស្តេច) នេះមានប្រវត្តិស្មើនឹងប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រជាតិខ្មែរ ។
លោកបានបន្តថា លក្ខណសម្បត្តិរបស់អ្នករាំស្រីអប្សរ ឬអ្នករបាំខ្មែរ គឺការធ្វើត្រាប់យ៉ាងប៉ិនប្រសប់ស្ទាត់ជំនាញ ។ ដោយហេតុថា កាយវិការនីមួយៗដែលជាសិល្បៈសុទ្ធសឹងតែមានន័យយ៉ាងប្រាកដប្រជាច្បាស់លាស់ ។ ដូចនេះហើយឥរិយាបថរបស់អ្នករបាំ ខ្មែរមិនអាចកែប្រែជាដាច់ខាតពីសម័យមួយទៅសម័យមួយទៀត ។ កាយវិការសំខាន់ជាងគេក្នុងរបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ឬរបាំអប្សរ (អប្សរា) គឺចលនាក្បាល, ដងខ្លួន, ដៃ និងម្រាមដៃដែលត្រូវសិល្បករ ប្រារឰប្រមាណជា ២០០០ ឆ្នាំមកហើយ ដោយនិរន្តរភាពរបស់របបរាជាធិបតេយ្យ ។
នៅចុងសតវត្សរ៍ទី១៩ លោក និពន្ធ រ៉ូដាំង ដែលបានទស្សនារបាំព្រះរាជទ្រព្យ ដែលបានសម្តែងនៅប្រទេសបារាំងបានពន្យល់ថា ស្រីរបាំខ្មែរបានបង្ហាញចំពោះយើងនូវអ្វីដែលបុរាណកាលបានបន្សល់ទុកជាកេរដំណែល ។ បុរាណភាពរបស់របាំនេះ ក៏ដូចបុរាណភាពរបស់ជាតិយើងដែរ ។ យើងបានគយគន់របាំនេះអស់រយៈពេល ៣ ថ្ងៃតែប៉ុណ្ណោះ ក៏ប៉ុន្តែមានអារម្មណ៍ថា ហាក់បីដូចជាបានរស់នៅក្នុងអំឡុង ៣០០០ ឆ្នាំពីមុនអ៊ីចឹង ។ ក្នុងលោកយើងនេះ គ្មានមនុស្សជាតិណាទេ ដែលមានភាពស្ទាត់ជំនាញឥតខ្ចោះដូចអ្នករបាំខ្មែរ និងក្រិកនោះទេ ៕

moneytary of Cambodia

2009-12-11T20:20:00.001-08:00

ប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្តនៃការរីកចំរើនរបស់សង្គមមនុស្សជាបន្តបន្តាប់បានធើ្វអោយ
មធ្យាបាយដោះដូរទំនិញ ចាប់កកើតឡើងដំបូងដែលមិនមែនជាលោហធាតុ មាស ប្រាក់ រឺក្រដាសប្រាក់នោះទេ។មធ្យោបាយដំបូងដែលមនុស្សយកមកប្រើប្រាស់សម្រាប់ដោះ
ដូរទំនិញនោះគឺជាទំនិញមួយដែរ។តែទំនិញនោះមានលក្ខណៈសមមូលជាទូទៅជា
មួយនឹងគ្នាទាំងអស់ហើយទំនិញទាំងអស់គិតជាតំលៃរបស់ វាដោយ ទំនិញកណ្តាលសម្រាប់ការដោះដូរ។ ឧទាហរណ៍ដូចជាសត្វចៀមនិងស្រូវជាទំនិញកណ្តាលដែលគេធ្វើការដោះដូរគ្នា។
ប៉ុន្តែនៅពេលដែលសិប្បកម្មមានការរីកចំរើន ហើយផ្តាច់ខ្លួនចេញពីកសិកម្មនោះ

នាំឲ្យមានការកើនយ៉ាងខ្លាំងនូវការដោះដូរទំនិញព្រោះសិប្បកម្មគឺជាផលិតកម្ម
ទំនិញយ៉ាងសំខាន់ពេលនោះ។ ការដោះដូរទំនិញគ្នាកាន់តែលាតសន្ធឹងឆ្ងាយទៅៗ ធ្វើឲ្យការប្រើសត្វរឺវត្តុជាទំនិញកណ្តាលសំរាប់ដោះដូរទំនិញគ្នាមានការលំបាកដូច្ចេះមនុស្សបានរិះរកនូវវិធីសម្រាប់ការដោះដូរទំនិញរបស់ខ្លួនឲ្យមានលក្ខណៈ
ងាយស្រួលនិងកាន់តែប្រសើរឡើង។តាមរយៈការរីកចំរើនរបស់ទ្រង់ទ្រាយដ៏
សាមញ្ញបំផុតរហូតដល់ទ្រង់ទ្រាយរូបិយវត្ថុនាពេលបច្ចុប្បន្ននេះ។ តាមការសិក្សាស្រាវជ្រាវនៅសម័យបុរេប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្តនៃប្រទេសកម្ពុជាយើងពុំឃើញ
មានឯកសារណាមួយ ដែលបញ្ជាក់អំពីការប្រើប្រាស់រូបិយវត្ថុនៅប្រទេសកម្ពុជា។ ដូច្ចេះទាក់ទងនឹងប្រវតិ្តរូបិយ វត្ថុរបស់កម្ពុជា ។
១រូបិយវត្ថុសម័យហ្វូណន សតវត្សទី១-៦

តាមការស្រាវជ្រាវរុករករបស់អ្នកបុរាណវត្ថុវិទូនៅអតីតកំពង់ផែអុកអែវរឺអូរកែវបានបញ្ចាក់ឲ្យដឹងថានៅសម័យហ្វូណន មានការបោះឲ្យប្រើប្រាស់នូវរូបិយវត្ថុលោហធាតុធ្វើពីមាស ប្រាក់ សំរិទ្ធសំរាប់ដោះដូរទំនិញ ព្រោះនៅកំពង់ផែនោះគេបានរកឃើញរូបិយវត្ថុលោហធាតុមានសណ្ឋានដូចរូបីយវត្ថុដែល
បោះឲ្យប្រើប្រាស់នៅក្នុង ប្រទេសមួយចំនួននៅសម័យនោះដែរ។ រូបិយវត្ថុលោហធាតុដែលគេសន្និដ្ឋានថាមាន ប្រភពមកពីរដ្ឋហ្វូណនត្រូវបានគេរកឃើញរហូតដល់ភាគខាងបស្ចឹមនៃឧបទី្វបឥណ្ឌូចិនទៀត រូបិយវត្ថុដែលរកឃើញទាំងនោះមានពីរបែបគឺៈ ម្ខាងរូបខ្យង ម្ខាងទៀតរូបជានិមិត្តរូបព្រះ នាងលក្ម្សីមហេសីព្រះវិស្ណុ។រូបិយវត្ថុរូបព្រះអាទិត្យៈម្ខាងមានរូបតំណាងព្រះនាងលក្ម្សីមហេសី ព្រះវិស្ណុតែរូបនេះមិនដូចគ្នាទាំងស្រុងទេ(ពីកាសមួយទៅកាសមួយ) ។ក្រៅពីនេះគេបានរកឃើញរូបិយវត្ថុរូបព្រះអាទិត្យជាចំនិតតូចៗ(ជាង1/4ឬ1/8នៃកាសមូលរូបព្រះអាទិត្យនេះ) ជាច្រើននៅកំពង់ផែអុកអែវ។ករណីនេះគេសន្និដ្ឋានបានថានៅសម័យហ្វូណនប្រជាគ្មានការបោះរូបិយវត្ថុតូចៗទេ(តូចជាង
កាសមូលរូបព្រះអាទិត្យនិងរូបខ្យងនេះ)វិធីកាត់បំបែករុបិយវត្ថុជាចំនិតៗដើម្បីចាយវាយ នេះជាទំលាប់មួយ ដែលគេនិយមប្រើនិងមានលក្ខណៈជាសកល។ ប៉ុន្តែកាស មូលខ្យងសង្ខ័ គេពុំឃើញមានការកាត់បំបែកជាចំនិតៗតូចៗទេ ដែលករណីនេះត្រូវបាន អ្នកបុរាណវិទូធ្វើការសនិ្នដ្ខានថា រូបិយវត្ថុរូបខ្យងសង្ខ័ប្រហែលជាកើតមុនរូបិយវត្ថុ ព្រះអាទិត្យ។ ដូចបានលើកឡើងខាងលើហើយថារុបីយវត្ថុទាំងពីរមិនមែនមានតែនៅ តំបន់កំពង់ផែអុកអែវទេគឺបានគេរកឃើញមាននៅប្រទេសសៀម និងភូមាទៀតដែល ករណីនេះនិក្ខេបបទពីររបស់បុរាណវត្ថុវិទូបានអះអាងឡើងថាដោយមានលក្ខណៈមិនឯកភាព គ្នា ។និក្ខេបបទទី១យល់ឃើញថារូបីយវត្ថុព្រះអាទិត្យនិងរូបខ្យងស័ង្ខនេះពុំមែនបោះ ដោយម្ចាស់ស្រុកដែលចាយវាយរូបីយវត្ថុនេះទេ ប្រហែលជានាំចូលពីប្រទេសឥណ្ឌា ភាគខាងត្បូង ដោយពួកអន្តោប្រវេសន៍ឥណ្ឌា។ រូបីយវត្ថុនេះពុំមែនជារបស់កម្ពជាទេ ពីព្រោះនៅប្រទេសកម្ពុជាសម័យបុរាណនោះគេពុំឃើញមានបោះរូបិយវត្ថុទេ លុះដល់សតវត្សទី16ទើបគេឃើញមានឯកសារបញ្ជាក់អំពីអត្ថិភាពនៃការបោះរូបិយវត្ថុ នោះនៅកម្ពុជា ។ មុនសតវត្សទី16ខ្មែរយើងធ្វើការដោះដូរទំនិញ ដោយយកទំនិញឬប្រើ ដុំមាស ឬប្រាក់ដើម្បីដោះដូរទំនិញធំៗតែម្តងដោយេគេពុំយកមាស ឬប្រាក់ទៅបោះជា រូបិយវត្ថុទេ។ និក្ខេបបទទី២យល់ឃើញថារូបីយវត្ថុព្រះអាទិត្យនិងរូបខ្យងស័ង្ខពិតជារបស់ រដ្ឋហ្វូណនមិនមែននាំចូលពីប្រទេសឥណ្ឌាភាគខាងត្បូងទេហើយរូបីយវត្ថុនេះត្រូវបាត់បង់ពី តំបន់វាលទំនាបទន្លេមេគង្គនេះទៅនៅពេលរដ្ឋហ្វូណនត្រូវបានផ្តួលរលំដោយរាជាណាចក្រ ចេនឡាដែលស្ថិតនៅក្រោមចំនុះ ហើយត្រូវបានរប៉ាត់រប៉ាយអស់ថែមទៀតនៅសម័យ បែកបាក់ជាចេនឡាទឹកលិចនិងចេនឡាដីគោក។តាម ការអះអាងឯកសារ នៃអនុគណៈកម្ម-ការត្រួតពីនិត្យ និងស្រាវជ្រាវយល់ឃើញថា និក្ខេបបទទី2មាន លក្ខណៈត្រឹមត្រូវជាងព្រោះប្រទេសខែ្មរនាសម័យហ្វូណនមានទំនាក់ទំនងពីណិជ្ជកម្មខ្លាំងក្លា ណាស់ដែលចាប់បាច់ត្រូវការរូបិយវត្ថុសំរាប់សំរួលដល់សកម្មភាពដោះដូរទំនិញ។ បើនិយាយពីសមត្ថភាពបោះរូបិយវត្ថុសម័យនោះសិប្បករខែ្មរក៏អាចធ្វើបានដែរ។ ពីព្រោះសិល្បៈជាងទងខាងចម្លាក់មានកំរិតខ្ពស់រួចទៅហើយ ហើយពាណិជ្ជកម្មក្រៅ ប្រទេសជំនាន់នោះក៏បាននាំមកនូវគំរុបោះរូបីយវត្ថុមកដល់ប្រទេសយើងដែរ(មាន
រូបិយវត្ថុមកពីចក្រភពរ៉ូមាំងពីប្រទេសនានានៅមជ្ឈឹមបូព៌ា និងមកពីប្រទេសឥណ្ឌា ដែលបានរកឃើញនៅកំពង់ផែអុកអែវ)។

២ រូបីយវត្ថុសម័យអង្គរ(សតវត្យទី៩-១៥)

តាមសិលាចារឹកដែលគេប្រម៉ែប្រមូលបានបញ្ជាក់ឲ្យឃើញថាសង្គមកម្ពុជានាសម័យអង្គរពុំ មានការបោះរូបិយវត្ថុសំរាប់ចាយវាយទេ។ចំពោះការដោះដូរតូចតាចគេប្រើអង្ករឬគ្រាប់ធុញ្ញជាតិ ផ្សេងៗធ្វើជាមធ្យោបាយដោះដូរ។ការដោះដូរមធ្យមគេប្រើក្រណាត់រីឯការដោះដូរធំៗ
គេប្រើមាសឬ ប្រាក់(តាមការកំណត់ហេតុរបស់ជីវកាក្វាន់)។ ចំពោះការដោះដូរនៅក្នុងប្រទេសភាគច្រើនគេធ្វើឡើងដោយទំនិញដូរទំនិញ។ ប្រជាជននៅតំបនើវាលទំនាបគេយកផលិតផលតំបន់ខ្លួនដួចជាក្រណាត់កម្ភុភ័ណ្ឌ(គ្រឿងសូន ដូចជាឆ្នាំងដីជាដើម)និងវត្ថុដែលសិប្បករផលិតបានទៅដូរអំបិលជាមួយ ប្រជាជននៅតាមតំបន់ឆ្នេរសមុទ្រឬទៅដូរយកដែកឬសំណប៉ាហាំងឬវត្ថកម្រងផ្សេងៗទៀត ពីស្រុកព្រៃភ្នំ។ប៉ុន្តែកំណត់ហេតុរបស់ជីតាក្វាន់បានបញ្ជាក់ថាមានការចាយវាយមាសប្រាក់
នៅក្នុងការ ដោះដូរ(ដូចជាទំនិញ ដីធ្លីជាដើម)។ សិលាចារឹកស្តុកកក់ធំ(សវទី9)ក៏បានបញ្ជាក់ថាការដោះដូវដែលចាយមាសគឺគេមានឈ្មោះរង្វាស់ទំងន់នីមួយៗរបស់គេច្បាស់លាស់តែពុំដឹងជា
រង្វាស់ នោះនឹងប៉ុន្មានក្រាមនាសម័យបច្ចុប្បន្ន។ចំពោះពាណិជ្ជកម្មក្រៅប្រទេសវិញគេ
យកសត្វក្របីផលិតផល សិប្បកម្មឬផលិតផលនៃការបរបាញ់(ដូចជាភ្លុក កុយរមាស ស្បែកសត្វព្រៃនិងសត្វស្លាប)ដើម្បីទៅដូរយកក្រណាត់សូត្រ មាស ប្រាក់ សំណប៉ាហាំង កែវ។ល។ ពីបរទេសវិញ។ អណិកជនចិននិងឥណ្ឌាដែលសម័យនោះនៅពុំទាន់មានចំនួនច្រើន
នៅឡើយភាគច្រើន គឺជាអ្នកក្តាប់ពាណិជ្ជកម្មនេះ។

៣,រូបិយវត្ថុក្រោយសម័យអង្គរ(សតវត្សទី15-19)

តាមឯកសារប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្តការបោះរូបិយវត្ថុលោហធាតុសម្រាប់ចាយវាយនៅទូទាំង
ប្រទេសនោះ គឺមាននៅរជ្ជកាលស្តេចកន(1512-1516)។សេ្តចកនបានឲ្យបោះប្រាក់ស្លឹងនិងមាសស្លឹងយ៉ាងណាៗនោះពុំឃើញមានឯកសារណាបញ្ជាក់ឲ្យបានច្បាស់លាស់ទេ។
ប៉ុន្តែមកដល់ចុង សតវត្សទី16នេះមានឯកសារមួយបានសរសេរដោយជនជាតិអេស្ប៉ាញម្នាក់ឈ្មោះគឺ
រ៉ូហ្គាដឺសង់អង់តូនីញ៉ូ បានបញ្ជាក់ថារូបីយវត្តុលោហធាតុដែលបោះនាពេលនោះមានវិជ្ជមាត្រជាង១០មមត្រា រូបសត្វស្លាបពីប្រាក់សំរីទ្ធិ(ល្បាយប្រាក់)។រុបសត្វស្លាបនេះតាមប្រវត្តិវិទូខ្លះថារូបមាន់ ឈ្មោលខ្លះថាជារូបក្អែក។ល។ដែលសត្វស្លាបនេះមានទម្រង់បែមុខទៅឆ្វេងខាងខ្នងប្រាក់នេះ
ពុំមានត្រាទេ(មើលរូបទី១)ហើយកាលបរិច្ឆេទនៃការបោះពុម្ពក៏ពុំមានដាក់ដែរ។ ការបោះរូបិយវត្ថុ បែប នេះបានបន្តដល់សតវត្សក្រោយៗទៀតហើយគេឲ្យឈ្មោះរូបិយវត្ថុនោះថាជាប្រាក់ស្លឹង។ តាមឯកសារប្រវត្តិសា្រស្តខ្លះបានបញ្ជាកើថាក្នុងរជ្ជកាលព្រះបាទអង្គឌួង(១៨៤០-១៨៥៩)ព្រះអង្គបានចាត់ចែងឲ្យបោះប្រាក់ស្លឹងដែរ ហើយប្រាក់ស្លឹងមានទំងន់មួយជីដែលមានរូបហង្សម្ខាង។រហូតដល់សម័យលង្វែកពុំមានឯកសារណាមួយបញ្ជាក់ថាខ្មែរចាយវាយប្រាក់អ្វីទេ។ ប៉ុន្តែបើយោងតាមព្រឹតិ្តការណ៍ប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្តដ៏សំខាន់មួយគឺនៅពេលដែលសៀមវាយចូល
បន្ទាយលង្វែកពុំបាន សំរេចនៅគ្រឹស្តរាជ្យ ១៥៨៨នោះសៀមបានប្រើឧបាយកលបាចប្រាក់ឌួងចូលគុម្ពឬស្សី ដែលជារបងដ៏រឹងមាំរបស់បន្ទាយលង្វែកក្នុងគោលបំនងឲ្យប្រជាជនខ្មែរកាប់ឆ្កាព្រៃ
យកប្រាក់ឌួងទាំងនោះ។ ត្រង់ចំនុចនេះសបញ្ជាក់អោយឃើញថាប្រជាជននាសម័យនោះស្គាល់ប្រាក់ឌួងនេះ ហើយប្រាក់ឌួងនេះអាចមានសកម្មភាពចរាចរចាយវាយក្នុងប្រទេសខ្មែរផងទើប
គេស្គាល់និងចង់បានប្រាក់ឌួងនេះ រហូតដល់កាប់ឆ្ការរបងឬស្សីដ៏រឹងមាំស្ទើរ
អស់ទាំងស្រុកបែបនេះ។

Cambodia Festivals

2009-10-11T20:22:00.001-07:00

1. Bon Phchom Ben (Khmer Ancestor)
Bon Phchom Ben is the autumnal festival dedicate to the spirits of the dead. During a 15- day period leading up to Bon Phchom Ben ( chab pi mouy rouch Khe phout trobut dol dob prab rouch khe phout trobut ), know as Bon Dak Ben, food and money are offer to monks.
On the 15th day of the festival the full moon appears. This day is Bon Phchom Ben(the collection of the Bens, or offerings). The ceremony ends with the full moon because its light deters ghosts(k'maoch) from venturing out at night. If Cambodian families do not make an offering to the Buddha during Bon Phchom Ben, it is believed the souls of dead relative will return to haunt their descendant. Respect for ancestors the khmer belief system and are common themes in cambodian films and TV dramas.

2. Khmer New year
The cambodian new year is a 3-day celebration to mark the end of the harvest and the turn of the lunar year. It takes place annually around the 14th,15th, 16th (or 13th, 14th, 15th)of April. People decorate homes in different colors and make offering to the buddha at local shrines. people usually visit a temple during the celebrations. Like its western equivalent, the Khmer New Year is a time to forget past hardships and look forward with hope. Houses are symbolically cleaned and people buy new clothes for the festival.

The first day of the festival is Moha Sangkran, the second is Virakbornaborth, and the third is Virak Lieng Sak. During this time people believe that the spirits of the old year explain their responsibilities to the spirits of the new year. As the New Year is born, so is the New Heaven. People prepare offerings in combination of lucky numbers (5 candles, 7cigarettes). These offerings are usually presented in a baysey; a container made from parts of the banana tree. Fruit, incense, tobacco and flowers are all accepted forms of offering.
People light candles and pray that the New Heaven will bring them joy. On Moha Sangkran,people build small mounds of sand around temple and Banyan trees. In the following days people add to these 'sand mountain' and invite monks to come and pray over them to appease the spirits of ancestors. On the morning of Virak Lieng Sak people ritually bathe statues of the Buddha. It ks also common for people to bathe their parents and grandparents as part of the cleaning ritual.
Traditional game played during 3 days is Moha Sangkran, Virak Lieng Sak and Virakvanaborth.

Bon Om Touk
Bon Om Touk, the water Festival, is celebrated on the 14-15 Kert Khea Ka Dek neng 1 Rouch Khea Ka Dek (Lunar Calendar) of November . Every town joins in the celebration but the place to be for Bon Om Touk is Phnom Penh. For Three Days, hordes of people pour in from the province and join with the city's residents to celebrate by night and day.
The Riverside comes alive with food stalls, firework and flotillas of brightly lit boats. Firework displays start immediately after sunset(around 6.00pm). The festival coincides with the full moon.
Bon Om Touk is one of the most important festivals in Cambodia. It provides a chance to give thanks to the Buddha for the year's rice harvest and to ask for sufficient rain in the coming year. The highlight of the festival is a series of boat races that take place over three days and honor the 12th century Cambodia naval victories achieved under king Jayavarman VII. Literally hunrreds of boats begin the latter-day knock-out tournament,which ends on the third day of the festival with the last two boats racing against each other. Each boat has its own colours and up to seventy crew member, so the early stages of the competition are dazzling. The rowers are urged on by a 'captain' on the prow who beats the stroke-rate with an oar. Some boats have a small altar for good luck.
There are several inportant festivals within the three-day period of Bon Om Touk. Loy Pratit(above) is a water carnival that begins around 7:00pm with illuminated boats taking to the water. Each boat represents a government ministry or state institution. Sampeas Preah Khe is a ceremony in which salutations are made to the moon. After the ceremony,people gather at a temple at midnight for Ork Ambok, named after the rice dish that forms part of the ceremony. Rice is fried in the husk and then pounded with a gaint pestle. The husks are removed and the special rice mixed with coconut and banana. This most traditional of khmer dishes is sold throughout the festival.
Royal Ploughing Ceremony
Th Royal Ploughing Ceremony, or Pithi Charat Preah Neanng Korl in khmer, is a prediction ceremony. During the Ploughing Ceremony, Cambodians believe that it is possible to predict a range of natural events including epidemics, floods , good harvests and excessive rainfall. The khmer are , in general, a highly superstitious people with deeply ingrained ideas about life , fortune and the supernatural. It is therefore unsurprising that a predictive ceremony such as the Royal Ploughing Ceremony is given important national status.
The Royal Ploughing Ceremony is held every year in May at the Veal Preamein Square in Phnom Penh, north of the Royal palace , and in front of the National Museum. It is a truly Khmer ceremony, reflecting the complex beliefs and superstition of the Cambodian people.
Bon Chol Vassa
Held to coincide with the eighth full moon of the lunar calendar, this festival marks the beginning of the three-month Buddhist lent, when Buddhist monks fast and meditate. Young men consider this festival auspicious for entering the monkhood.

Katenatian បុណ្យកឋិនទាន

2009-10-09T01:37:00.001-07:00

ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា ជាសាសនារបស់រដ្ឋ ដែលប្រជាជនខ្មែរយើងទូទាំងប្រទេស ដែលតែងតែគោរពបូជា ប្រតិបត្ដិយ៉ាងយកចិត្ដទុក នេះក៏ដោយសារតែប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរយើង មានជំនឿទៅលើផលបុណ្យ ផលបាប ដែលជា ទង្វើដែលខ្លួនបានធ្វើ គឺធ្វើល្អបានល្អ ធ្វើអាក្រក់បានអាក្រក់ ។ ជាមួយគ្នានេះផងដែរ ព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនា បានដើរតួ យ៉ាងសំខាន់នៅក្នុងការអប់រំមនុស្សដែលរស់នៅក្នុងសង្គមទាំងផ្លូវកាយ ទាំងផ្លូវចិត្ត ដើម្បីឱ្យមនុស្សទទួលបាននូវសេចក្ដីសុខ ។ លើសពីនេះ អ្វីដែលគួរឱ្យកត់សម្គាល់នោះ នៅក្នុងព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាមានពិធីបុណ្យធំៗ ជាច្រើនដែលប្រជាពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរយើងតែងតែ ប្រារឰធ្វើឡើង ជារៀងរាល់ឆ្នាំ និងរដូវកាលដែលបានកំណត់
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តាមការបង្ហាញពីសៀវភៅបុណ្យទំនៀមទម្លាប់ខ្មែរ ទាំង១២ ខែបានបង្ហាញថា ៖
បុណ្យ កឋិនទាន គឺជាបុណ្យមួយ ដែលប្រជាជនខ្មែរប្រារឰធ្វើឡើយក្នុងពេលកំណត់មួយ គឺមានចំនួន ២៩ ថ្ងៃ ចាប់ពីថ្ងៃ ១ រោច ខែ អសុជ្ស រហូតដល់ថ្ងៃទី ១៥ កើតពេញបូរមី ខែ កត្ដិក ។ ហើយបុណ្យ កឋិនមានលក្ខណៈ ខុសប្លែក ៥ យ៉ាងអំពីបុណ្យដទៃផ្សេងៗ និងក្លាយជាបុណ្យដ៏មានសារៈ សំខាន់នៅក្នុងវត្ដពុទ្ធសាសនា និងនៅក្នុង ចំណោមពុទ្ធបរិស័ទទូទៅ ។
លក្ខណៈប្លែក ៥ យ៉ាងគឺ ៖
១-ប្លែកដោយកាល
ព្រះពុទ្ធ ទ្រង់អនុញ្ញាតកឋិនកាល មានតែចំនួន ២៩ ថ្ងៃ គឺ ៖ ១៤ ថ្ងៃក្នុងខែអស្សុជ (កំណត់ពីថ្ងៃ១ រោច រហូតដល់ថ្ងៃ ១៤ រោច ឬខែដាច់) និង១៥ ថ្ងៃក្នុងខែកត្ដិក (កំណត់ពីថ្ងៃ១ កើត ដល់ថ្ងៃ ១៥ កើត ពេញបូរមី)។ រយៈពេលនេះ ហៅតាមពាក្យសាមញ្ញថា “ រដូវកឋិន ” ។ បុណ្យកឋិនធ្វើបានតែម្ដងគត់ ក្នុងមួយឆ្នាំ សម្រាប់វត្ដ មួយ និងត្រូវធ្វើតាមពេលកំណត់មិនមានមុន និងមិនមានក្រោយ ។ ភិក្ខុអាចទទួលសំពត់កឋិនបាន តែមួយដងគត់ ក្នុងមួយរដូវកឋិន ។
២-ប្លែកដោយវត្ថុ
សំពត់ ដែលជាអង្គកឋិន នោះមាន ៖ ស្បង់ចីវរ និងសង្ឃាដី ដែលបានធ្វើត្រឹមត្រូវតាមពុទ្ធាបញ្ញត្តិ ។ យោង តាមវិន័យបញ្ញត្តិ ទោះបីជាទាយក ឬទាយកា នាំសំពត់មួយត្រៃមកប្រគេនភិក្ខុសង្ឃ ក៏ភិក្ខុសង្ឃអ្នកក្រាលគ្រង លោករើសយកតែមួយមុខ មកធ្វើជាអង្គកឋិន ។ តាមធម្មតា ភិក្ខុច្រើនតែរើសយកសង្ឃាដីធ្វើជាអង្គកឋិន ពីព្រោះ សង្ឃាដីជាសំពត់ធំជាងគេបង្អស់ក្នុងត្រៃចីវរ ហើយអាចប្រើសម្រាប់ដណ្ដប់ដូចជាភួយ នៅពេលរងាក៏បាន ។
៣-ប្លែកដោយអំពើ
តាម ទំនៀមទម្លាប់ ពុទ្ធបរិស័ទតែងតែមានជំនឿថា ការធ្វើបុណ្យចំពោះភិក្ខុមួយអង្គ ៗ ពុំសូវមានអានិសង្ឃច្រើន ដូចជាធ្វើនឹង សង្ឃ ទេ (សង្ឃសំដៅយកភិក្ខុចំនួនពី៤ អង្គឡើងទៅ)។ យោងតាមវិន័យបញ្ញត្តិអង្គ កឋិនអាចវេរប្រគេនចំពោះសង្ឃ យ៉ាងហោចណាស់ ក៏មានវត្ដមានភិក្ខុ៥ អង្គដែរ ដើម្បីឱ្យកើតជាកឋិនពេញ លក្ខណៈបាន ។
៤-ប្លែកដោយបដិគ្បដិការគាហកៈ (ដោយអ្នកទទួល)
មានតែ ភិក្ខុទេ ដែលអាចទទួលសំពត់កឋិនបាន (រីឯសាមណេរ និងអ្នកដ៏ទៃទទួលពុំបាន)។ ភិក្ខុនោះត្រូវ តែគង់ចាំវស្សាគម្រប់ ៣ ខែ ក្នុងវត្ដ ឬអាវាសណាមួយ ។ ភិក្ខុមិនបានគង់ចាំវស្សាគ្មានសិទ្ធទទួលអង្គកឋិនទេ ។
៥-ប្លែកដោយអនិសង្ឃ
នៅក្នុង ការធ្វើបុណ្យកឋិន ទាយក និងទាយកា តែងទទួលបានអនិសង្ឃច្រើន ។ យោងតាមវិន័យបិដក ភាគ៨ ត្រង់កឋិនក្ខន្ធកៈ ភិក្ខុសង្ឃដែលជាអ្នកអនុមោទនា និងក្រាលគ្រងកឋិន ត្រូវបានទទួលអនិសង្ឃ ៥ យ៉ាង ក្នុងរយៈពេល ៥ ខែ ។ អានិសង្ឃទាំង ៥ យ៉ាងនោះគឺ ៖
(១)-អនាមន្ដចារោ ៖ ភិក្ខុត្រាច់ទៅកាន់ទីដទៃ ដោយមិនបាច់លាភិក្ខុផងគ្នាបាន និងមិនមានទោស (ត្រូវអាបត្តិ) ឡើយ ។
(២)-អសមានទានចារោ ៖ ភិក្ខុត្រាច់ទៅដោយមិនបាច់យកសំពត់ណាមួយ ឬត្រៃចីវរគ្រប់ប្រដាប់ ជាប់ជាមួយបាន ។
(៣)-គណភោជនំ ៖ ភិក្ខុអាចឆាន់គណភោជនំបាន ។
(៤)-យាវនត្ថចីវរំ ៖ ភិក្ខុអាចទុក អតិរេកចីវរ (ចីវរដែលលើសអំពីសេចក្ដីត្រូវការ)ចំនួនប៉ុន្មាន ក៏បាន ។
(៥)-យោ ច តត្ថ ចីវរុប្បានោ សោ នេសំ ភវិស្សិតិ ៖ ចីវរណាកើតឡើងក្នុងអាវាស នោះ ចីវរនោះនឹងមានដល់ភិក្ខុនោះ។
វិន័យ បិដក ភាគ៨ កឋិនក្ខន្ធកៈ បានចែកអំពីប្រភពនៃបុណ្យកឋិនថា ៖ “ នៅក្នុងសម័យពុទ្ធកាល ព្រះ សម្ពុទ្ធជាម្ចាស់ ទ្រង់ពុទ្ធានុញ្ញាត ឱ្យភិក្ខុប្រើប្រាស់តែបង្សុកូលចីវរ ទ្រង់ពុំទាន់បានអនុញ្ញាត ឱ្យប្រើគហបតីចីវរនៅ ឡើយ ។
សម័យកាលនោះ នៅក្នុងរវាងមជ្ឈិមពោធិកាល ព្រះពុទ្ធកំពុងគង់ចាំព្រះវស្សា ក្នុងវត្ដជេតពន ដែលជា អារាមរបស់អនាថបណ្ឌិកសេដ្ឋីសាងថ្វាយ នៅទៀបក្រុងសាវត្ថី ។ ត្រានោះ មានភិក្ខុ ៣០រូប ឈ្មោះថា ភទ្ទវគ្គិត្ថេរ ក្នុងដែនបាថេយ្យ ជាអ្នកប្រព្រឹត្តធម៌នៅក្នុងព្រៃ ។ ល។ បាននាំគ្នានិមន្តចេញអំពីទីនោះ មកកាន់ក្រុង សាវត្ថី ដើម្បីចូលគាល់បម្រើព្រះដ៏មានព្រះភាគ ។ ប៉ុន្តែភក្ខុទាំងអស់ បានមកដល់តែត្រឹមសាកេត (ភូមិមួយជាប់ នឹងទីក្រុងសាវត្ថី) ស្រាប់តែថ្ងៃចូលវស្សាក៏មកដល់នឹងស្រូតមកទៀតមិនទាន់ ក៏នាំគ្នាផ្អាកធ្វើដំណើរ ស្វែងរកទី សេនាសនៈនៅចាំវស្សា ៣ ខែ នាពាក់កណ្តាលផ្លូវនោះតែម្ដងទៅ។ ភិក្ខុសង្ឃទាំង ៣០ រូបមានសេចក្ដីអផ្សុក កើត ទុក្ខតូចព្រះទ័យជាខ្លាំង ដោយគិតឃើញថា ព្រះភាគទ្រង់គង់នៅទីនោះ ចម្ងាយតែ៦យោជន៍ទៀតសោះ មិនសម យើងទាំងឡាយស្កុនដំណើរ មិនបានគាល់បម្រើព្រះអង្គដូចបំណងសោះ ។
លុះដល់ ថ្ងៃចេញវស្សា បវារណាស្រេចហើយ ភិក្ខុទាំងអស់ក៏នាំគ្នាប្រញាប់ចូលទៅកាន់ក្រុងសាវត្ថី ។ នៅ ទីនោះភិក្ខុសង្ឃទាំងអស់បានចូលធ្វើសាវនាការជាមួយនឹងព្រះពុទ្ធ ដោយមានស្បង់ចីវរទទឹកជោក ។ ព្រះមានព្រះ ភាគទ្រង់មានបន្ទូលរាក់ទាក់ទៅកាន់ភិក្ខុទាំងនោះថា ៖ “ ម្នាលភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយ សរីយន្ដរបស់អ្នកទាំងឡាយលម្ម អត់សង្កត់បាន ឬទេ ? ល្មមប្រព្រឹត្ដទៅបានឬទេ? តើអ្នកទាំងឡាយមានសេចក្ដីព្រមព្រៀងស្មោះស្មើ ឥតមានវិវាទ ទាស់ទែងគ្នា ទេឬ? អ្នកទាំងឡាយនៅចាំវស្សាសោត ស្រួលបួលមិនលំបាកដោយអាហារបិណ្ឌបាត ទេឬ?
ភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយនោះ ក៏ក្រាបបង្គំទូល នូវសេចក្ដីលំបាករបស់ខ្លួន ដែលមានមកតាមផ្លូវដោយសព្វគ្រប់ តាមដំណើរ ។
លំដាប់ នោះ ព្រះដ៏មានព្រះភាគទ្រង់សម្ដែងធម្មឹកកថា ប្រារឰអំពីសង្សារវដ្ដមិនមានទីបំផុត ប្រោសប្រទាន ដល់ភិក្ខុទាំងនោះ ។ លុះចប់ធម៌ហើយ ភិក្ខុទាំងអស់នោះ បានជាព្រះអរហន្តទាំងអស់អង្គ រួចហើយក៏នាំគ្នា ក្រាប ថ្វាយបង្គំលាព្រះសម្ពុទ្ធ វិលទៅកាន់លំនៅរបស់ខ្លួនវិញ ។
បន្ទាប់អំពីនោះមក ព្រះមានព្រះភាគទ្រង់តម្រិះថា បើប្រសិនជាតថាគតបានតែងតាំងកឋិនត្ថារកិច្ច ទុក មកពីគ្រាមុន ម្លេះសមភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយនោះបានលះចីវរមួយទុកនៅកន្លែងជាប់មកតែ ស្បង់ចីវរប៉ុណ្ណោះ មានអត្ថភាព ស្រាលមិនលំបាកយ៉ាងនេះសោះឡើយ ។ ហើយកឋិនត្ថារ កិច្ចនេះព្រះពុទ្ធរាល់ព្រះអង្គ ក៏តែងអនុញ្ញាតទុកដល់ សាវកពុំដែលលះបង់ផង ។ ព្រះដ៏មានព្រះភាគទ្រង់ព្រះ ដូច្នេះហើយ ទើបទ្រង់ត្រាស់ហៅភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយមក រួចហើយក៏ទ្រង់អនុញ្ញាតកឋិនត្ថារកិច្ច ដោយព្រះពុទ្ធដីកាថា ៖
អនុជា នាមិ វេ វស្សំ វុដ្ឋានំ ភិក្ខុនំ កឋិនំ។ អត្ថរិតុំ អត្ថតំ កឋិនទានំ វោ ក្ខវេ បញ្ច ស្សន្ដិ ។ “ ប្រែថា ” ម្នាលភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយតថាគតអនុញ្ញាតឱ្យភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយ ដែលបាន នៅចាំវស្សារួចហើយទទួលក្រាលគ្រងកឋិន ។ ម្នាលភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយ ! កាលបើភិក្ខុទាំងឡាយបានក្រាលគ្រងកឋិន ហើយ នឹងបានសម្រេចអានិសង្ស ៥ ប្រការ ” ។ បន្ទាប់មកព្រះសម្មាសម្ពុទ្ធ ទ្រង់អនុញ្ញាត ឱ្យភិក្ខុទទួលស្បង់អំពី ពុទ្ធបរិស័ទ និងគហបតីទាំងឡាយ ក្នុងពេលមួយខែ កំណត់ពីថ្ងៃ ១ រោច ខែអស្សុជ រហូតដល់ថ្ងៃទី ១៥ កើតពេញ បូរមី ខែកត្ដិក (រវាងពាក់កណ្ដាលខែតុលា រហូតដល់ពាក់កណ្ដាលខែវិច្ឆិកា)។ ព្រះដ៏មានព្រះភាគទ្រង់ព្រះមេត្ដា ប្រោសអនុញ្ញាត ភិក្ខុសង្ឃដែលអនុមោទនា និងក្រាលគ្រង កឋិននោះ បានទទួលអានិសង្ស ៥ ប្រការ។ ជនមាន សទ្ធា ដែលបានធ្វើកឋិនទាន មានឈ្មោះថា ជាអ្នកបានគោរពនូវព្រះពុទ្ធដីកា ដែលទ្រង់បានអនុញ្ញាតឱ្យភិក្ខុសង្ឃ បានទទួលអានិសង្ឃ ៥ ប្រការផង ជាអ្នកមានចិត្តអាណិតអាសូរចំពោះភិក្ខុសង្ឃ ដែលគង់ចាំវស្សាអស់មួយត្រៃ មាសនោះផង និងជាអ្នកតអាយុព្រះពុទ្ធសាសនាអស់កាលជាយូរអង្វែងទៅផង ។
ព្រះ សម្ពុទ្ធទ្រង់សំដែងថា “ សុខស្ស ទាតា មេធាវី សុខំ សោ អធិគច្ឆតិ ។ “ ប្រែថា ”ជន ដ៏មានប្រាជ្ញណាមួយ បានធ្វើនូវសេចក្ដីសុខស្រួល (ដល់អ្នកដ៏ទៃ) ជននោះឯង រមែងបានជួបប្រទៈនឹងសេចក្ដីសុខ ស្រួលជាពិតប្រាកដពុំខានឡើយ ។ ” សេចក្ដីអធិប្បាយយ៉ាងនេះថា ជនណាបានធ្វើកឋិនទាន ដែលនាំឱ្យព្រះភិក្ខុ សង្ឃ បានអនិសង្ឃ ៥ យ៉ាងក្នុងរវាង៥ ខែ បានឈ្មោះថា ជាអ្នកឱ្យសេចក្ដីសុខស្រួលដល់អ្នកដ៏ទៃ នៅក្នុងបច្ចុប្បន្ន ជាតិ ជននោះឯងតែងតែបានសុខ ក្នុងមនុស្សលោកនិងទេវលោក ក្នុងពេលអនាគត។ ដោយអំណាចផល្លានិសង្ឃនៃ កឋិនទាននោះ ក្នុងអនាគតកាល ជននោះ នឹងបានជាឯហិភិក្ខុនី ដែលមានត្រៃចីវរកើតឡើងឯកឯង ដោយឬទ្ធិ នៅ ពេលបុព្វជ្ជា ជាបុព្វជិតក្នុងសាសនាព្រះពុទ្ធអង្គណាមួយ ហើយក៏នឹងបានសម្រេចមគ្គផល និព្វានក្នុងពេលបុព្វជ្ជានោះ ជាពិតប្រាកដពុំខានឡើយ ។
តាំងពីពេលនោះមក បុណ្យកឋិនបានក្លាយជាបុណ្យទំនៀមទម្លាប់របស់ពុទ្ធបរិស័ទ ដើម្បីបំពេញនូវសេចក្ដី ត្រូវការស្បង់ចីវរដ៏វិសេសនេះ ។
វេលា រាត្រីមុនថ្ងៃបុណ្យកឋិន ទាយក ទាយកា ម្ចាស់ដើមបុណ្យ និងញាតិមិត្រ នាំគ្នាយកត្រៃចីវរ និង គ្រឿងបរិក្ខារផ្សេងៗ ទៅកាន់វត្ដអារាម ដែលគេបានទាក់ទងស្និទ្ធស្នាល រួចមកហើយ និងធ្វើកុសលខ្លះៗ ដូចជា ថ្វាយបង្ថ្វាយបង្គំគុំព្រះរតនត្រ័យ អារាធនាព្រះសង្ឃចម្រើនព្រះបរិត្ដ និងស្ដាប់ព្រះសង្ឃសម្ដែងធម្មទេសនា (ស្ដីអំពីអានិ សង្ឃកឋិន)។
លុះ ព្រឹកស្អែកឡើង ទាយក ទាយកា និងពុទ្ធបរិស័ទ ម្ចាស់ដើមបុណ្យនាំគ្នាតៅកាន់វត្ដម្ដងទៀត ។ គេ ប្រារឰពិធីថ្វាយបង្គំព្រះរតនត្រ័យ សមាទានសីល ៥ ឬសីល ៨ ដាក់បាត្រ បង្សុ័កូល និងវេរភត្ដប្រគេនព្រះសង្ឃ។
បន្ទាប់ពីថ្ងៃត្រង់ ទាយក និងទាយកា ម្ចាស់ដើមបុណ្យ ព្រមទាងញាតិមិត្រ នាំគ្នាទូលពានត្រៃចីវរ និងកាន់ ទ្រនូវគ្រឿងបរិក្ខារជាបរិវារកឋិន ផ្សេងៗ ដើរប្រទក្សិណព័ទ្ធជុំវិញរោងឧបោសថ ( ឬព្រះវិហារ ) ចំនួន៣ ជុំ។ អ្នកទាំងអស់ត្រូវបាននាំមុខដោយក្រុមភ្លេងឆៃយ៉ាំ និងភិក្ខុសូត្រធម៌ ព្រមទាំងមានពុទ្ធបរិស័ទទាំងហ្វូងដង្ហែតាម ពីក្រោយ។
បន្ទាប់មក ត្រៃចីវរ និងគ្រឿងបរិក្ខារជាបរិវារកឋិន ត្រូវបានវេរប្រគេនចំពោះភិក្ខុសង្ឃ ដោយអនុលោម តាមក្បួន និងទម្រង់ការដែលបានបញ្ញត្តិទុកមក ។
ពេលពិធីវេរអង្គកឋិន បានចប់សព្វគ្រប់ហើយ គឺជានាទីរបស់សង្ឃ ដើម្បីជួបជុំគ្នាជាថ្មីឡើងវិញ នៅក្នុង រោងឧបោសថ ឬព្រះវិហារ និងដើម្បីប្រារឰពិធីឆ្លងកឋិនទាន (សម្ពោធកឋិន) ទៅតាមវិន័យបញ្ញត្តិ ។
តាម ធម្មតា គ្រូចៅអធិការ ឬថេរភិក្ខុ នៅក្នុងវត្ដត្រូវធ្វើសំណូមពរឱ្យមានភិក្ខុមួយរូប ជាតំណាងសង្ឃ ដើម្បីអនុមោទនា និងក្រាលគ្រងអង្គកឋិន ។ ជាយថាហេតុ ភិិក្ខុអង្គណាដែលមានស្បង់ចីវររហែកដាច់ នឹងត្រូវ ជ្រើសឡើង ។ រោងឧបោសថ ឬព្រះវិហារ គឺជាកន្លែងសម្រាប់ធ្វើសង្ឃកម្មពិសេស (សម្ពោធកឋិន)នេះ ។ ពិធីនេះ ដោយឡែកសម្រាប់តែសង្ឃ ពួកគ្រហស្ថមិនអាចចូលរួមជាមួយបានឡើយ ។
ពុទ្ធបរិស័ទមានជំនឿថា ការធ្វើបុណ្យកឋិន នៅវត្ដដែលមានព្រះវិហារបញ្ចុះសីមារួចហើយ ទើបបានអនិ សង្ឃច្រើន ។
នៅប្រទេសខ្មែរ បុណ្យកឋិន គឺជាបុណ្យសប្បាយអឹកធឹក មានពណ៌ចម្រុះឆើតឆាយ មានទិដ្ឋភាពជាបុណ្យ ពុទ្ធសាសនាយ៉ាងមហោឡារិក ។
ជាការពិតណាស់ បុណ្យកឋិន គឺជាឱកាសមួយ សម្រាប់បណ្តុះបណ្តាលអំពើល្អ និងគុណធម៌ នៅក្នុងដួងចិត្ត យើងគ្រប់ៗ គ្នា ។

Cambodian Wedding

2009-10-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

In Khmer wedding, it has a lot of ceremonies held in chronological orders. They show the historical roots related to the Buddha’s period which existed ages ago. According to a book “Khmer Wedding Rules” of Oknha Nov, it puts that in ancient Khmer wedding laws, people perform a song describing God Vesandor Borom Pothisat arranging the marriage between his children – Chealy and Kroesna. And some other songs are about the marriage arrangement of God Ream and Seda.

Oknha Nov wrote that the current wedding preparations are arranged according to the rules

drawn up by King Preah Chey Chesda Thebdey. According to the king’s book, it puts that all ceremonies in Khmer wedding are related to mythical stories such as a story “Som Sla Kanseng”. It is told that there were two men who went to feed their buffalos in the field would like to make friends with each other and wanted to be relative by marriage with each other because one had a son and the other had a daughter. In order to prove their words, they ask for betel nuts packed in krama from each other to show their promise that their children would marry to each other. Another story is “the three betel flowers”. It describes that there were four men who had different skills – swimming, shooting, fortune telling, and magic. After completing their study, they returned home. Along the way back near a stream, the fortune teller said that day they were going to meet a girl and become their wife. Then a big bird swooped down on a girl, Khemry, who was having a bath. Right away the shooting man took his bow and shot the bird down back to the stream. The swimmer then swam to bring her to the ground but she was just dead. After that the magic man helped her be alive again. All four men felt in love with the lad, so they were judged by the Buddha that she would become a wife of someone who swam to help her because he was able to touch her body first. And the fortune teller, magic man, and shooting man would become the father, mother, and brother respectively. Since then in all weddings, the bride and the groom must have three betel flowers in order to show gratitude towards their parents and brothers/sisters.

Setting-the-date ceremony and the groom holding the scarf are told that Prince Thaong was married to Princess Tevtey, a daughter of the sea dragon king. After setting the date already, Tevtey had to bring him to her father at dragon world, so the sea dragon’s daughter asked the prince to hold her scarf in order to dive into the dragon world. In the meanwhile, the dragon king commanded his man to kill the prince at the gate in order to test the prince’s ability. But the daughter had known this; hence, she disguised herself as the prince by changing her skirt and it was put on the prince instead so that the killer was not able to kill the prince. That is why in the current Khmer wedding it was seen that there is clothes change between the groom and the bride, and the groom holding the bride’s scarf in to the room, accompanied by “Phat Cheay and Neang Neak” songs, etc.The ceremony called “Chey Haong Sousdey Haong Men Haong” in wedding ceremony performed until now is followed by an ancient story recorded in “the rules of wedding” book. It describes that Once upon a time there were two brothers – Chey and Sousdey. At that time, there was no king to continue after the previous king had died in Cambodia, so the officials in the palace relied on the holy elephant and horse to find a man to be their king. Then the animals approached the brothers’ house. Consequently, they knew that one of the brothers was the suitable man to be crowned. Chey became the king and Sousdey became his assistant at the same time. When crowned, the people whooped to bless the king. They said “Chey Haong Sousdey Haong Men Haong” simultaneously. The blessing is adapted to use in the wedding until now. “Bongvil Popil” ceremony in the Khmer wedding is also written in “collective Khmer legends” book, volume 9. According to the legend, it is told that once upon a time, there was a man named Chey Sorya who had completed the magic training already from Eyso God, so he asked the God for a sacred relic as a blessing tool for the weddings of human being. Then the God gave the man a replica of his penis and a replica of his wife’s vagina as the blessing tools to spread their reputation in the world. Eyso God took diamond sand from the universe to make a gold banyan leaf representing his wife’s vagina and took a diamond rock from Himalaya Mountain to make a candle representing his penis and supposed them to be “two blessings”. He then told the man to take the candle wrapped in the banyan leaf to circle three times around grooms and brides in order to inhale the smoke making them powerful. The “Popil” ceremony is believed to bring harmony and joyfulness for the new couples making them successful in all challenges. Since Khmer people firmly and sincerely believe in “Popil”, it is performed not only in wedding ceremony but also in other ceremonies such as housewarming, birthday, etc.“holding a sword” tradition in the wedding progress is also told that once upon a time there was a high ranking knight in Peareansey Palace, who fell in love with a daughter of the villager and deposit a piece of gold as a dowry and promised to marry in three months’ time. Three years had gone, so she was married to her neighbor villager but on the wedding day, the knight appeared and took out his sword and killed the man who was the groom. Then the chief clergyman had prayed to dismiss all bad things at the place. The clergyman had analyzed on the power of the sword. That is why people use a sword in the wedding when the bride and the groom are in pair for blessing.

Tradition on Khmer Wedding Season

Wedding ceremony is very meaningful for each of individual’s life who follows their tradition and the laws of the country. That is why this ceremony is carefully dealt with concerning to choosing the date which is believed to bring luck and harmony for the people’s lives and starting a new families. Some families do not allow their children to marry in the rain season and some delay it for two years after the engagement ceremony because of the fortune telling.

According to Mr. Nhean Phoeun, a researcher and publisher of Khmer tradition of national and international festival committee, he said that Khmer tradition allows people to marry only in a period of six months in a year but not the other six. Wedding can be carried out only in the 30-day months. Those six months could be in early May, July, October, January, and March. But for engagement ceremony and matching the natural chemistry between son and daughter, they could be performed in any month.

He continued that for the above months, there are only 7 days of each month that are good days. According to the Khmer tradition, they should not perform on their birthday, religious day, lunar or and solar eclipse, and during Khmer new years.

Actually, the reason people do not get married in the rain season is that there are a lot of rains that make it difficult for the wedding reception, procession, and other ceremonies. It is also difficult for the guests travelling to wedding party and it is when farmers are busy with their fields.

2009-10-08T00:14:00.000-07:00

Theravada Buddhism is the religion of virtually all of the ethnic Khmers, who constitute about 90% or more of the Cambodian population. Buddhism originated in what are now north India and Nepal during the sixth century B.C. Theravada Buddhism is a tolerant, non-prescriptive religion that does not require belief in a supreme being. Its precepts require that each individual take each individual take full responsibility for his own actions and omissions.

Buddhism is based on three concepts: dharma (the doctrine of the Buddha, his guide to right actions and belief); karma (the belief that one's life now and in future lives depends upon one's own deeds and misdeeds and that as an individual one is responsible for, and rewarded on the basis of, the sum total of one's acts and act's incarnations past and present); and sangha, the ascetic community within which man can improve his karma. The Buddhist salvation is nirvana, a final extinction of one's self. Nirvana may be attained by achieving good karma through earning much merit and avoiding misdeeds.
A Buddhist's pilgrimage through existence is a constant attempt to distance himself or herself from the world and finally to achieve complete detachment, or nirvana. The fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine are the Four Noble Truths: suffering exits; craving (or desire) is the cause of suffering; release from suffering can be achieved by stopping all desire; and enlightenment –
Bddhahood – can be attained by following the Noble Eightfold Path (right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration), which constitutes a middle way between sensuality and ascetism. Enlightenment consists of knowing these truths. The average layperson cannot hope for nirvana after the end of this life, but can by complying, as best he or she is able to, with the doctrine's rules of moral conduct-hope to improve his or her karma and thereby better his condition in the next incarnation.

Traditional khmer dance

2009-10-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

Traditional khmer dance is better described as " dance-drama" in that the dance are not merely dance but are also meant to convey a story or message. There are four main modern genres of traditional Khmer dance : Classical Dance , Shadow theater, Lakhon Khol(all-male masked dance- drama), Folk Dance.

As evidenced in part by the innumerable apsaras that adorn the walls of ankorian and pre- ankorian temple, dance has been part of khmer culture for well more than a millennium, though there have been ruptures in the tradition over the centuries, making it almost impossible to precisely trace the source of the tradition. Much of traditional dance is inspired by Angkorian-era art and themes, but the tradition has not been passed unbroken from the age of Angkor.
Most traditional dance seen today were developed in the 18th through 20th centuries, beginning in earnest with a mid-19th century revival championed by King Ang Duong (r 1841-1869). Subsequent kings and other khmer Royals also strongly supported the arts and dance, most particularly Queen Sisowath Kossamak Neariroth (retired King Norodom Sihanouk's mother) in the mid-20th century, who not only fostered a resurgence in the study and development of khmer traditional dance, but also helped move it out of the place and popularize it. Many traditional dance including most theatrical Folk Dances were developed and refined from the 1940s-60s under the guidance and patronage of Queen Kossamak at the Conservatory of Performing Art and the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) in phnom penh. Queen Kossamak trained her granddaughter Princess Bopha Tevy in traditional dance from early childhood , and she went on to become the face of khmer traditional dance in the 1950s and 60s both in Cambodia and around the world. Like so much of Cambodia art and culture, traditional dance was almost lost under the brutal repression of the khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s, only to be revived and reconstructed in the 1980s and 90s due, in large part, to the extraordinary efforts of Princess Bopha Tevi.

Classical dance, including the famous " Apsara dance" has a grounded, subtle, restrained, yet featherlight, ethereal appearance. Distinct in its ornate costuming taut posture, arched back and feed, flexed fingers flexed, codified facial expressions, slow, close, deliberate but flowing movements, Classical dance is uniquely khmer. It presents themes and stories inspired primarily by the Reamker (The Cambodian version of the Indian classic, the Ramayana) and by the age of Angkor.

Folk Dance come in two form : ceremonial and theatrical. As a general rule only theatrical folk dance is presented in public performances, with ceremonial Folk Dance reserved for particular rituals, celebration and holidays. Theatrical folk dances such as the popular Good Harvest Dance and the romantic Fishing Dance are usually adaptations of dances found in the countryside or inspired by rural life and practices. Most of the Theatrical Folk Dances that are seen in performances today were developed at the RUFA in Phnom Penh in the 1960s as part of an effort to preserve and perpetuate Khmer culture and arts.

Shadow puppet theater comes in two form : Sbeik Thom(big puppets that act as panels depicting characters from the story) and Sbeik Toch (small articulated puppets). The black leather puppets are held in front of a light source, either in front or behind a screen, creating a shadow/silhouette effect. Sbeik Thom is the more uniquely cambodian, more formal of the two types, restricting itself to stories from the Reamker. Sbeik Toch has a far lighter feel, presenting popular stories of heroes, adventures, love and battles, with or without orchestra and with the puppeteers often doing the narration.

People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1993

2009-09-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

Kampuchea (PRK) was founded after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, the khmer Rouge government. Brought about by an invasion from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies. Although it enjoyed very limited international recognition and failed to secure United Nations endorsement due to the diplomatic intervention of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States (among a host of other countries in their wake) on behalf of the ousted Pol Pot regime, the PRK was the de facto government of Cambodia between 1979 and 1993.
The People's Republic of Kampuchea was renamed as State of Cambodia (SOC), État du Cambodge, Roet Kampuchea in Khmer, during the last four years of its existence in an attempt to attract international sympathy. It retained, however, most of its leadership and single-party structure, while undergoing a transition and eventually giving way to the restoration of the Kingdom of Cambodia. The PRK/SOC existed as a communist state from 1979 until 1991, year in which the ruling single party abandoned its Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The PRK was established in the wake of the total destruction
of the country's institutions, infrastructure and intelligentsia wreaked by Khmer Rouge rule. Despite its inherent weaknesses and the odds stacked against it, which included being dismissed as a "puppet state" of Vietnam and being imposed grievous economic sanctions, as well as a debilitating Civil War, the PRK/SOC remained stronger than its enemies and was able to achieve the reconstruction of Cambodia as a nation. Some authors have compared the PRK/SOC period to the Thermidorian Reaction, the 1794 revolt in the French Fevolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror.

The Khmer Rouge directs its hostility against Vietnam

Initially, communist Vietnam was a strong ally of the Khmer Rouge while it was fighting against Lon Nol's Khmer Republic during the 1970 - 1975 civil war. Only after the Khmer Rouge took power things began to turn sour, when on May 1st 1975 Khmer Rouge soldiers raided the islands of Phu Quoc and Tho Chu, killing more than five hundred Vietnamese civilians; following the attack, the islands were swiftly recaptured by Hanoi. Even then, the first reactions of the Vietnamese were ambiguous, and it took Vietnam a long time to react with force, for the first impulse was to arrange matters "within the family sphere".
Massacres of ethnic Vietnamese and of their sympathizers, as well as destruction of Vietnamese Catholic Churches, by the Khmer Rouge took place sporadically in Cambodia under the Democratic Kampuchea regime, especially in the Eastern Zone after May 1975. In November, pro-Vietnamese Khmer Rouge leader Vorn Vet led an unsuccessful coup d'etat and was subsequently arrested, tortured and executed.Incidents escalated along all of Cambodia's borders. There were now tens of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese exiles on Vietnamese territory, and even so Hanoi's response was half-hearted.
By early 1978, however, the Vietnamese leadership decided to support internal resistance to the Pol Pot regime and the Eastern Zone of Cambodia became a focus of insurrection. In the meantime, as 1978 wore on, Khmer Rouge bellicosity in the border areas surpassed Hanoi's threshold of tolerance. War hysteria against Vietnam reached bizarre levels within Democratic Kampuchea as Pol Pot tried to distract attention from bloody inner purges. In May 1978, on the eve of So Phim's Eastern Zone uprising, Radio Phnom Penh declared that if each Cambodian soldier killed thirty Vietnamese, only 2 million troops would be needed to eliminate the entire Vietnamese population of 50 million. It appears that the leadership in Phnom Penh was seized with immense territorial ambitions, i.e., to recover the Mekong Delta region, which they regarded as Khmer territory.

The Salvation Front

The Kampuchea United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS or FUNSK) was an organization that would be pivotal in overthrowing the Khmer Rouge regime and establishing the PRK/SOC state. The salvation front was a heterogeneous group of communist and non communist exiles determined to fight against the Pol Pot regime and rebuild Cambodia. Led by Heng Samrin and Pen Sovann in a zone liberated from the Khmer Rouge, the front's foundation was announced Radio Hanoi on December 3,1978. Of the salvation front's fourteen central committee members, the top two leaders —Heng Samrin, president, and Chea Sim, vice president— had been "former" Kampuchea Communist Party (KCP) officials; others were former Khmer Issarak as well as "Khmer Viet Minh" members who had lived in exile in Vietnam. Ros Samay, secretary general of the KUFNS, was a former KCP "staff assistant" in a military unit.
The government of Democratic Kampuchea lost no time in denouncing the KUFNS, as "a Vietnamese political organization with a Khmer name," because several of its key members had been affiliated with the KCP. Despite being dependent on Vietnamese protection and the backing of the Soviet Union behind the scenes, the KUFNS had an immediate success among exiled Cambodians. This organization provided a much-needed rallying point for Cambodian leftists opposed to Khmer Rouge rule, channelling efforts towards positive action instead of empty denunciations of the genocidal regime. The KUFNS provided as well a framework of legitimacy for the ensuing invasion of Democratic Kampuchea by Vietnam and the subsequent establishment of a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh.

The Vietnamese invasion

Vietnamese policy makers finally opted for a military solution and, on December 22, Vietnam launched its offensive with the intent of overthrowing Democratic Kampuchea. An invasion force of 120,000, consisting of combined armor and infantry units with strong artillery support, drove west into the level countryside of Cambodia's southeastern provinces. After a seventeen-day blitzkrieg, Phnom Penh fell to the advancing Vietnamese on January 7,1979. The retreating Armed Forces of Democratic Kampuchea (RAK) and Khmer Rouge cadres burnt rice granaries, which, along with other causes, provoked a severe famine all over Cambodia beginning in the last half of 1979 and which lasted until mid-1980.
On 1 January 1979, the salvation front's central committee proclaimed a set of "immediate policies" to be applied in the areas liberated from the Khmer Rouge. First the communal kitchens were abolished and some Buddhist monks would be brought to every community to reassure the people. Another of these policies was to establish "people's self-management committees" in all localities. These committees would form the basic administrative structure for the Kampuchea People's Revolutionary Council (KPRC), decreed on January 8, 1979, as the central administrative body for the PRK. The KPRC served as the ruling body of the Heng Samrin regime until June 27, 1981, when a new Constitution required that it be replaced by a newly elected Council of Ministers.Pen Sovan became the new prime minister. He was assisted by three deputy prime ministers-- Hun Sen, Chan Si, and Chea Soth.

Establishment of the PRK (1979 - 1989)

On 10 January 1979, the DK army had been routed and the Vietnamese troops had captured the capital Phnom Penh. The KPRC proclaimed that the new official name of Cambodia was the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). The new administration was supported by a substantial Vietnamese military force and civilian advisory effort. A genocidal regime had ended, but to China —who had steadfastly supported DK—, the USA —eager to find ways to get even with Vietnam for its humiliating defeat in the Vietnam War—, as well as other major powers, the swift defeat of the Khmer Rouge marked the beginning of "the Cambodian Problem".
Despite the Vietnam-sponsored invasion and control, and the loss of independence that went along with it, the new order was welcomed by almost the entire Cambodian population, weary of Khmer Rouge brutality. However, there was some plundering of the almost empty capital of Phnom Penh by Vietnamese forces, who carried the goods on trucks back to Vietnam. This unfortunate behaviour would in time contribute to create a negative image of the invaders. The negative image played in the hands of the enemies of the PRK regime, who would manipulate it in their favour during the existence of the Vietnam-friendly PRK/SOC regime. However, the role of the Vietnamese Army (PAVN) in providing the security needed for the almost totally-destroyed nation to rebuild and develop institutions, should not be underestimated.
Heng Samrin was named head of state of the PRK, and other Khmer communists that had formed the Kamuchea People's Revolutionary Party, like Chan Sy and Hun Sen, were prominent from the start. As events in the 1980s progressed, the main preoccupations of the new regime would be survival, restoring the economy, and combating the Khmer Rouge insurgency by military and political means.

Khmer Rouge Regim 1975-1979

2009-09-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) refers to the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Political party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea.
The four-year period saw the death of approximately 2 million Cambodians through the combined result of political executions, starvation, and forced labor. Because of the large number of deaths, the deaths during the rule of the Khmer Rouge are often considered a genocide.
The Khmer Rouge period ended with the invasion of Cambodia by neighbor and former ally Vietnam in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, which left Cambodia under Vietnamese occupation for a decade.

Background

The Khmer Rouge party (also known as the Angkar) was formed in 1968 as the armed section of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), Kampuchia being the Communist name for Cambodia. In the 1970s, General Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as head of state. Sihanouk went to the Khmer Rouge for support, and therefore gave the movement some legitimacy through his influence. They continued to gain power in the countryside when they campaigned as a peaceful group during the country's civil war.The party continued to garner support until 1975, when they took control of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge followed Maoist Communist philosophies, which focus on agriculture rather than industry (ironically, the national emblem had a factory on it). Pol Pot admired Cambodian farmers' way of life, one that didn't utilize money, education, or the tenets of capitalism. It was also "untainted by Buddhism". When the party came to power, it quickly set in applying these aspects of Cambodian farming life on the entire population. To do this, they felt that they had to move everyone out of the cities and industrialized areas. Determined to create this agrarian utopia, Pol Pot and his forces began the deportation of people from the cities.

The Evacuation of the Cities

The deportations were one of the markers of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge rule. They demanded that and then forced the people to leave the cities and live in the countryside.Phnom Penh - populated by 2.5 million people—was soon nearly empty. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Similar evacuations occurred throughout the nation.
The conditions of the evacuation and the treatment of the people involved depended often on which military units and commanders were conducting the specific operations. Pol Pot's brother – Chhay, who worked as a Republican journalist in the capital – was reported to have died during the evacuation of Phnom Penh.
Even Phnom Penh's hospitals were emptied of their patients. The Khmer Rouge provided transportation for some of the aged and the disabled, and they set up stockpiles of food outside the city for the refugees; however, the supplies were inadequate to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people on the road. Even seriously injured hospital patients, many without any means of conveyance, were summarily forced to leave regardless of their condition.
According to Khieu Samphan, the removal of Phnom Penh's population resulted in 2,000 to 3,000 deaths. The foreign community, about 800 people, was quarantined in the French embassy compound, and by the end of the month the foreigners were taken by truck to the Thai border. Khmer women who were married to foreigners were allowed to accompany their husbands, but Khmer men were not permitted to leave with their foreign wives.
Aside from the alleged threat of US air strikes, the Khmer Rouge justified the evacuations in terms of the impossibility of transporting sufficient food to feed an urban population of between 2 and 3 million people. Lack of adequate transportation meant that, instead of bringing food to the people (tons of it lay in storehouses in the port city of Kampong Saom, now known as Sihanouk ville, according to Father François Ponchaud), the people had to be brought to (and had to grow) the food.
Western historians claim that the motives were political, based on deep-rooted resentment of the cities. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and "parasitism" of city life would be completely uprooted. In addition, Pol Pot wanted to break up the "enemy spy organizations" that allegedly were based in the urban areas. Finally, it seems that Pol Pot and his hard-line associates on the CPK Political Bureau used the forced evacuations to gain control of the city's population and to weaken the position of their factional rivals within the communist party.

Society under the Angkar

The social transformation wrought by the Khmer Rouge, first, in the areas that they occupied during the war with Lon Nol and, then, in varying degrees, throughout the country, was far more extreme than anything attempted by the Russian, Chinese, or Vietnamese revolutions.
According to Pol Pot, five classes existed in pre-revolutionary Cambodia: peasants,workers, bourgeoisie, capitalists, and feudalists. Post-revolutionary society, as defined by the 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea, consisted of workers, peasants, and "all other Kampuchean working people." No allowance was made for a transitional stage such as China's "New Democracy" in which "patriotic" landlord or bourgeois elements were permitted to play a role in socialist construction.
Sihanouk writes that in 1975 he,Khieu Samohan, and Khieu Thirith went to visit Zhou Enlai, who was gravely ill. Zhou warned them not to attempt to achieve communism in a single step, as China had attempted in the late 1950s with the Great Leap Forward. Khieu Samphan and Khieu Thirith "just smiled an incredulous and superior smile."{See Page 63 of Jackson, Karl D. Cambodia, 1975-1978: Rendezvous with Death.Princeton U. Press, 1992.} Khieu Samphan and Son Sen later boasted to Sihanouk that "we will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermediate steps."
Although conditions varied from region to region, a situation that was, in part, a reflection of factional divisions that still existed within the CPK during the 1970s, the testimony of refugees reveals that the most salient social division was between the politically suspect "new people," those driven out of the towns after the communist victory, and the more reliable "old people", the poor and lower middle-class peasants who had remained in the countryside. Despite the ideological commitment to radical equality, CPK members and the armed forces constituted a clearly recognizable elite.
The working class was a negligible factor because of the evacuation of the urban areas and the idling of most of the country's few factories. The one important working class group in pre-revolutionary Cambodia—laborers on large rubber plantations—traditionally had consisted mostly of Vietnamese emigrants and thus was politically suspect.
The number of people, including refugees, living in the urban areas, on the eve of the communist victory probably was somewhat more than 3 million, in a wartime population that has been estimated between 5.7 and 7.3 million. As mentioned, despite their rural origins, the refugees were considered "new people"—that is, people unsympathetic to Democratic Kampuchea. Some doubtless passed as "old people" after returning to their native villages, but the Khmer Rouge seem to have been extremely vigilant in recording and keeping track of the movements of families and of individuals.
The lowest unit of social control, the krom (group), consisted of ten to fifteen nuclear families whose activities were closely supervised by a three-person committee. The committee chairman was selected by the CPK. This grass roots leadership was required to note the social origin of each family under its jurisdiction and to report it to persons higher up in the Angkar hierarchy. The number of "new people" may initially have been as high as 2.5 million.
The "new people" were treated as slave laborers. They were constantly moved, were forced to do the hardest physical labor, and worked in the most inhospitable, fever-ridden parts of the country, such as forests, upland areas, and swamps. "New people" were segregated from "old people," enjoyed little or no privacy, and received the smallest rice rations. When the country experienced food shortages in 1977, the "new people" suffered the most.
The medical care available to them was primitive or nonexistent. Families often were separated because people were divided into work brigades according to age and sex and sent to different parts of the country. "New people" were subjected to unending political indoctrination and could be executed without trial.
The situation of the "old people" under Khmer Rouge rule was more ambiguous. Refugee interviews reveal cases in which villagers were treated as harshly as the "new people," enduring forced labor, indoctrination, the separation of children from parents, and executions; however, they were generally allowed to remain in their native villages.
Because of their age-old resentment of the urban and rural elites, many of the poorest peasants probably were sympathetic to Khmer Rouge goals. In the early 1980s, visiting Western journalists found that the issue of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge was an extremely sensitive subject that officials of the People's Republic of Kampuchea had little inclination to discuss.
On the basis of interviews with refugees from different parts of the country as well as other sources, Michael Vickery, author of Cambodia 1975-1982, has argued that there was a wide regional variation in the severity of policies adopted by local Khmer Rouge authorities. Ideology had something to do with the differences, but the availability of food, the level of local development, and the personal qualities of cadres also were important factors. The greatest number of deaths occurred in undeveloped districts, where "new people" were sent to clear land. While conditions were hellish in some localities, they apparently were tolerable in others.
Vickery describes the Eastern Zone, which was dominated by pro-Vietnamese cadres, as one in which the extreme policies of the Pol Pot leadership were not adopted (at least until 1978, when the Eastern leadership was liquidated in a bloody purge). Executions were few, "old people" and "new people" were treated largely the same, and food was made available to the entire population.
Although the Southwestern Zone was one original center of power of the Khmer Rouge, and cadres administered it with strict discipline, random executions were relatively rare, and "new people" were not persecuted if they had a cooperative attitude.
In the Western Zone and in the Northwestern Zone, conditions were harsh. Starvation was widespread in the latter zone because cadres sent rice to Phnom Penh rather than distributing it to the local population.
In the Northern Zone and in the Central Zone, there seem to have been more executions than there were victims of starvation.
Little reliable information emerged on conditions in the Northeastern Zone, one of the most isolated parts of Cambodia.
On the surface, society in Democratic Kampuchea was strictly egalitarian. The Khmer language, like many in Southeast Asia, has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. These usages were abandoned. People were encouraged to call each other "friend, or "comrade" (in Khmer, មិត្ដ mitt), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation.
Language was transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. People were told they must "forge" (lot dam) a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (opokar) of the Angkar, and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (cchoeu sttak aram, or "memory sickness") could result in their receiving Angkar's "invitation."
However, some people were "more equal" than others. Members and candidate members of the CPK, local-level leaders of poor peasant background who collaborated with the Angkar, and members of the armed forces had a higher standard of living than the rest of the population. Refugees agree that, even during times of severe food shortage, members of the grass-roots elite had adequate, if not luxurious, supplies of food. One refugee wrote that "pretty new bamboo houses" were built for Khmer Rouge cadres along the river in Phnom Penh.
According to Craig Etcheson, an authority on Democratic Kampuchea, members of the revolutionary army lived in self-contained colonies, and they had a "distinctive warrior-caste ethos." Armed forces units personally loyal to Pol Pot, known as the "Unconditional Divisions," were a privileged group within the military.
Although their revolutionary ideology was extreme, the highest ranks of the Khmer Rouge leadership exhibited a talent for nepotism that matched that of the Sihanouk-era elite. Pol Pot's wife, Khieu Ponnary, was head of the Association of Democratic Khmer Women and her younger sister, Khieu Thirith, served as minister of social action. These two women are considered among the half-dozen most powerful personalities in Democratic Kampuchea. Son Sen's wife, Yun Yat, served as minister for culture, education and learning.
Several of Pol Pot's nephews and nieces were given jobs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of Ieng Sary's daughters was appointed head of the Calmette Hospital although she had not graduated from secondary school. A niece of Ieng Sary was given a job as English translator for Radio Phnom Penh although her fluency in the language was extremely limited.
Family ties were important, both because of the culture and because of the leadership's intense secretiveness and distrust of outsiders, especially of pro-Vietnamese communists. Greed was also a motive. Different ministries, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, were controlled and exploited by powerful Khmer Rouge families. Administering the diplomatic corps was regarded as an especially profitable fiefdom.

Religious and minority communities

Article 20 of the 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea guaranteed religious freedom, but it also declared that "all reactionary religions that are detrimental to Democratic Kampuchea and the Kampuchean People are strictly forbidden." About 85 percent of the population follows the Theravada school of Buddhism. The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks, regarded by the regime as social parasites, were defrocked and forced into labor brigades.
Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were destroyed or turned into storehouses or jails. Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying or expressing religious sentiments were often killed. The Christian and Muslim communities also were even more persecuted, as they were labeled as part of a pro-Western cosmopolitan sphere, hindering Cambodian culture and society.
The Roman Ctholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was completely razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden ( haram). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
The Khmer Rouge's treatment of minorities seems to have varied from group to group. The Vietnamese endured the greatest suffering. Tens of thousands were raped, mutilated, and murdered in regime-organized massacres. Most of the survivors fled to Vietnam.
The Cham, a Muslim minority who are the descendants of migrants from the old state of Champa, were forced to adopt the Khmer language and customs. Their communities, which traditionally had existed apart from Khmer villages, were broken up. Forty thousand Cham were killed in two districts of Kampong Cham Province alone. Thai minorities living near the Thai border also were persecuted.
Despite the fact that Chinese and Sino-Khmers had dominated the Cambodian economy for centuries and could be considered exploiters of the peasantry, the Khmer Rouge apparently did not single them out for harsh treatment. The war drove most rural Chinese into the cities and, after the forced evacuations of the cities, they and their urban compatriots were equally regarded as "new people." They shared the same hardships as Khmers, however. Khmer Rouge's very tentative and informal contact with China was probably a factor in the regime's reluctance to persecute them openly.
In the late 1980s, little was known of Khmer Rouge policies toward the tribal peoples of the northeast, the Khmer Loeu. Pol Pot established an insurgent base in the tribal areas of Ratanakiri Province in the early 1960s, and he may have had a substantial Khmer Loeu following. Predominantly animist peoples, with few ties to the Buddhist culture of the lowland Khmers, the Khmer Loeu had resented Sihanouk's attempts to "civilize" them. Cambodia expert Serge Thion notes that marriage to a tribal person was considered "final proof of unconditional loyalty to the party." Khieu Samphan may have been married to a tribal woman.

Education and health

Like the radical exponents of the Cultural Revolution in China during the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge regarded traditional education with undiluted hostility. After the fall of Phnom Penh, they executed thousands of teachers. Those who had been educators prior to 1975 survived by hiding their identities.
Aside from teaching basic mathematical skills and literacy, the major goal of the new educational system was to instill revolutionary values in the young. For a regime at war with most of Cambodia's traditional values, this meant that it was necessary to create a gap between the values of the young and the values of the nonrevolutionary old.
The regime recruited children to spy on adults. The pliancy of the younger generation made them, in the Angkar's words, the "dictatorial instrument of the party." In 1962 the communists had created a special secret organization, the Democratic Youth League, that, in the early 1970s, changed its name to the Communist Youth League of Kampuchea. Pol Pot considered Youth League alumni as his most loyal and reliable supporters, and used them to gain control of the central and of the regional CPK apparatus. The powerful Khieu Thirith, minister of social action, was responsible for directing the youth movement.
Hardened young cadres, many little more than twelve years of age, were enthusiastic accomplices in some of the regime's worst atrocities. Sihanouk, who was kept under virtual house arrest in Phnom Penh between 1976 and 1978, wrote in War and Hope that his youthful guards, having been separated from their families and given a thorough indoctrination, were encouraged to play cruel games involving the torture of animals. Having lost parents, siblings, and friends in the war and lacking the Buddhist values of their elders, the Khmer Rouge youth also lacked the inhibitions that would have dampened their zeal for revolutionary terror.
Health facilities in the years 1975 to 1978 were abysmally poor. Many physicians either were executed or were prohibited from practicing. It appears that the party and the armed forces elite had access to Western medicine and to a system of hospitals that offered reasonable treatment, but ordinary people, especially "new people," were expected to use traditional plant and herbal remedies that usually were ineffective. Some bartered their rice rations and personal possessions to obtain aspirin and other simple drugs.

Economy

In its general contours, Democratic Kampuchea's economic policy was similar to, and possibly inspired by, China's radical Great Leap Forward that carried out immediate collectivization of the Chinese countryside in 1958. During the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge established "mutual assistance groups" in the areas they occupied.
After 1973, these were organized into "low-level cooperatives" in which land and agricultural implements were lent by peasants to the community but remained their private property. "High-level cooperatives," in which private property was abolished and the harvest became the collective property of the peasants, appeared in 1974. "Communities," introduced in early 1976, were a more advanced form of high-level cooperative in which communal dining was instituted. State-owned farms also were established.
Far more than the Chinese communists, the Khmer Rouge relentlessly pursued the ideal of economic self-sufficiency, in their case the version that Khieu Samphan had outlined in his 1959 doctoral dissertation. Extreme measures were taken. Currency was abolished, and domestic trade or commerce could be conducted only through barter. Rice, measured in tins, became the most important medium of exchange, although people also bartered gold, jewelry, and other personal possessions.
Foreign trade was almost completely halted, though there was a limited revival in late 1976 and early 1977. Mainland China was the most important trading partner, but commerce amounting to a few million dollars was also conducted with France, with Britain, and with the United States through a Hong Kong intermediary.
From the Khmer Rouge perspective, the country was free of foreign economic domination for the first time in its 2,000-year history. By mobilizing the people into work brigades organized in a military fashion, the Khmer Rouge hoped to unleash the masses' productive forces.
There was an " Angkorian" component to economic policy. That ancient kingdom had grown rich and powerful because it controlled extensive irrigation systems that produced surpluses of rice. Agriculture in modern Cambodia depended, for the most part, on seasonal rains.
By building a nationwide system of irrigation canals, dams, and reservoirs, the leadership believed it would be possible to produce rice on a year-round basis. It was the "new people" who suffered and sacrificed the most to complete these ambitious projects.
Although the Khmer Rouge implemented an "agriculture first" policy in order to achieve self-sufficiency, they were not, as some observers have argued, "back-to-nature" primitivists. Although the 1970-75 war and the evacuation of the cities had destroyed or idled most industry, small contingents of workers were allowed to return to the urban areas to reopen some plants.
Like their Chinese counterparts, the Cambodian communists had great faith in the inventive power and the technical aptitude of the masses, and they constantly published reports of peasants' adapting old mechanical parts to new uses. Much as the Chinese had attempted unsuccessfully to build a new steel industry based on backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge sought to move industry to the countryside. Significantly, the seal of Democratic Kampuchea displayed not only sheaves of rice and irrigation sluices, but also a factory with smokestacks.

Politics

By the April 1975 communist victory, Pol Pot and his close associates occupied the most important positions in the CPK and in the state hierarchies. He had been CPK general secretary since February 1963. His associates functioned as the party's Political Bureau, and they controlled a majority of the seats on the Central Committee.
Khieu Thirith's management of youth groups meant that Pol Pot had ample reserves of zealous young cadres, "the nucleus and wick of the struggle," committed to imposing the party center's will throughout the country. But his domination of the revolutionary movement was not complete. In different areas of the country, especially in the Eastern Zone, pro-Vietnamese and veteran Khmer Issarak commanders were jealous of their independence. They questioned, and at times openly defied, his policies of revolutionary terror and hostility toward Vietnam. The highest ranks of the party were not free of dissension.
Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant purges reached a crest in 1977 and 1978 when hundreds of thousands of people, including some of the most important CPK leaders, were executed.
The exact number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies is debated, as is the cause of death among those who died. Access to the country during Khmer Rouge rule was very limited. In the early 1980s, the Vietnamese-installed regime that succeeded the Khmer Rouge conducted a national household survey, which concluded that over 3.3 million had died, but most modern historians do not consider that number to be reliable.
Modern research has located thousands of mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia, containing an estimated 1.39 million bodies. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease.
The United States Department of State and the State Department funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project give estimates of the total death toll as 1.2 million and 1.7 million respectively. Amnesty International estimates the total death toll as 1.4 million.R.J Rummel, an analyst of historical political killings, gives a figure of 2 million. Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot gave a figure of 800,000, and his deputy, Khieu Samphan, said 1 million had been killed.

Establishing the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea

The communists abolished the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (established in 1970). Cambodia did not have any form of government until the proclamation of the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea on January 5, 1976. Three months later, on April 2, Sihanouk resigned as head of state. Sihanouk remained under comfortable, but insecure, house arrest in Phnom Penh, until late in the war with Vietnam he departed for the United States where he made Democratic Kampuchea's case before the Security Council. He eventually relocated to China.
Khieu Samphan described the 1976 Constitution as "not the result of any research on foreign documents, nor…the fruit of any research by scholars. In fact the people—workers, peasants, and Revolutionary Army—wrote the Constitution with their own hands." It was a brief document of sixteen chapters and twenty-one articles that defined the character of the state; the goals of economic, social and cultural policies; and the basic tenets of foreign policy.

The "rights and duties of the individual" were briefly defined in Article 12. They included none of what are commonly regarded as guarantees of political human rights except the statement that "men and women are equal in every respect." The document declared, however, that "all workers" and "all peasants" were "masters" of their factories and fields. An assertion that "there is absolutely no unemployment in Democratic Kampuchea" rings true in light of the regime's massive use of forced labor.
The Constitution defined Democratic Kampuchea's foreign policy principles in Article 21, the document's longest, in terms of "independence,peace,neutrality, and nonalignment." It pledged the country's support to anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World. In light of the regime's aggressive attacks against Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao territory during 1977 and 1978, the promise to "maintain close and friendly relations with all countries sharing a common border" bore little resemblance to reality.
Governmental institutions were outlined very briefly in the Constitution. The legislature, the Kampuchea People's Representative Assembly (KPRA), contained 250 members "representing workers, peasants, and other working people and the Kampuchean Revolutionary army." One hundred and fifty KPRA seats were allocated for peasant representatives; fifty, for the armed forces; and fifty, for worker and other representatives. The legislature was to be popularly elected for a five-year term. Its first and only election was held on March 20,1976. "New people" apparently were not allowed to participate.
The executive branch of government also was chosen by the KPRA. It consisted of a state presidium "responsible for representing the state of Democratic Kampuchea inside and outside the country." It served for a five-year term, and its president was head of state. Khieu Samphan was the only person to serve in this office, which he assumed after Sihanouk's resignation. The judicial system was composed of "people's courts," the judges for which were appointed by the KPRA, as was the executive branch.

The Constitution did not mention regional or local government institutions. After assuming power, the Khmer Rouge abolished the old provinces (khet) and replaced them with seven zones; the Northern Zone, Northeastern Zone, Northwestern Zone, Central Zone, Eastern Zone, Western Zone, and Southwestern Zone. There were also two other regional-level units: the Kracheh Special Region Number 505 and, until 1977, the Siemreab Special Region Number 106.
The zones were divided into damban (regions) that were given numbers. Number One, appropriately, encompassed the Samlot region of the Northwestern Zone (including Battambang Province), where the insurrection against Sihanouk had erupted in early 1967. With this exception, the damban appear to have been numbered arbitrarily.
The damban were divided into srok (districts), khum (subdistricts), and phum (villages), the latter usually containing several hundred people. This pattern was roughly similar to that which existed under Sihanouk and the Khmer Republic, but inhabitants of the villages were organized into krom (groups) composed of ten to fifteen families. On each level, administration was directed by a three-person committee (kanak, or kena).
CPK members occupied committee posts at the higher levels. Subdistrict and village committees were often staffed by local poor peasants, and, very rarely, by "new people." Cooperatives (sahakor), similar in jurisdictional area to the khum, assumed local government responsibilities in some areas.

The fall of Democratic Kampuchea

Military aggression
Not content with enslaving Cambodia in the name of “communism”, the KR leaders also dreamed of reviving the Angkorian empire of a thousand years earlier, which ruled over large parts of what today are Thailand and Vietnam. This involved launching military attacks into southern Vietnam in which hundreds of unarmed villagers were massacred. Immediately following the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975, there were skirmishes between their troops and Vietnamese forces. A number of incidents occurred in May 1975. The Cambodians launched attacks on the Vietnamese islands of Phu Quoc and Tho Chu and intruded into Vietnamese border provinces. In late May, at about the same time that the United States launched an air strike against the oil refinery at Kampong Saom, following the Mayaguez incident, Vietnamese forces seized the Cambodian island of Poulo Wai.
The following month, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary visited Hanoi. They proposed a friendship treaty between the two countries, an idea that met with a cool reception from Vietnam's leaders. Although the Vietnamese evacuated Poulo Wai in August, incidents continued along Cambodian's northeastern border. At the instigation of the Phnom Penh regime, thousands of Vietnamese also were driven out of Cambodia.
Relations between Cambodia and Vietnam improved in 1976, in part because of Pol Pot's preoccupation with intraparty challenges. In May Cambodian and Vietnamese representatives met in Phnom Penh in order to establish a commission to resolve border disagreements.
The Vietnamese, however, refused to recognize the Brévié Line—the colonial-era demarcation of maritime borders between the two countries—and the negotiations broke down. In late September, however, a few days before Pol Pot was forced to resign as prime minister, air links were established between Phnom Penh and Hanoi.
With Pol Pot back in the forefront of the regime in 1977, the situation rapidly deteriorated. Incidents escalated along all of Cambodia's borders. Khmer Rouge forces attacked villages in the border areas of Thailand near Aranyaprathet. Brutal murders of Thai villagers, including women and children, were the first widely reported concrete evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. There were also incidents along the Lao border.
At approximately the same time, villages in Vietnam's border areas underwent renewed attacks. In turn, Vietnam launched air strikes against Cambodia. In September, border fighting resulted in as many as 1,000 Vietnamese civilian casualties. The following month, the Vietnamese counter-attacked in a campaign involving a force of 20,000 personnel.
Vietnamese defense minister General Vo Nguyen Giap underestimated the tenacity of the Khmer Rouge, however, and was obliged to commit an additional 58,000 reinforcements in December. On January 6, 1978, Giap's forces began an orderly withdrawal from Cambodian territory. The Vietnamese apparently believed they had "taught a lesson" to the Cambodians, but Pol Pot proclaimed this a "victory" even greater than that of April 17,1975. For several years, the Vietnamese government sought in vain to establish peaceful relations with the KR regime. But the KR leaders were intent on war. Behind this seeming insanity clearly lay the assumption that China would support the KR militarily in such a conflict.

Faced with growing Khmer Rouge belligerence, the Vietnamese leadership decided in early 1978 to support internal resistance to the Pol Pot regime, with the result that the Eastern Zone became a focus of insurrection. War hysteria reached bizarre levels within Democratic Kampuchea. In May 1978, on the eve of So Phim's Eastern Zone uprising, Radio Phnom Penh declared that if each Cambodian soldier killed thirty Vietnamese, only 2 million troops would be needed to eliminate the entire Vietnamese population of 50 million. It appears that the leadership in Phnom Penh was seized with immense territorial ambitions, i.e., to recover the Mekong Delta region, which they regarded as Khmer territory.

Massacres of ethnic Vietnamese and of their sympathizers by the Khmer Rouge intensified in the Eastern Zone after the May revolt. In November, Vorn Vet led an unsuccessful coup d'etat. There were now tens of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese exiles on Vietnamese territory.
On December 3, 1978, Radio Hanoi announced the formation of the Kampuchea National United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS). This was a heterogeneous group of communist and noncommunist exiles who shared an antipathy to the Pol Pot regime and a virtually total dependence on Vietnamese backing and protection. The KNUFNS provided the semblance, if not the reality, of legitimacy for Vietnam's invasion of Democratic Kampuchea and for its subsequent establishment of a satellite regime in Phnom Penh.
In the meantime, as 1978 wore on, Cambodian bellicosity in the border areas surpassed Hanoi's threshold of tolerance. Vietnamese policy makers opted for a military solution and, on December 22, Vietnam launched its offensive with the intent of overthrowing Democratic Kampuchea. A force of 120,000, consisting of combined armor and infantry units with strong artillery support, drove west into the level countryside of Cambodia's southeastern provinces. Together, the Vietnamese army and the National Salvation Front struck back at the KR on December 25.
After a seventeen-day campaign, Phnom Penh fell to the advancing Vietnamese on January 7,1979. Pol Pot and the main leaders initially took refuge near the border with Thailand. After making deals with several governments, they were able to use Thailand as a safe staging area for the construction and operation of new redoubts in the mountain and jungle fastness of Cambodia's periphery, Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders regrouped their units, issued a new call to arms, and reignited a stubborn insurgency against the regime in power as they had done in the late 1960s.
For the moment, however, the Vietnamese invasion had accomplished its purpose of deposing an unlamented and particularly violent dictatorship. A new administration of ex-Khmer Rouge fighters under the control of Hanoi was quickly established, and it set about competing, both domestically and internationally, with the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia.
Peace still eluded the war-ravaged nation, however, and although the insurgency set in motion by the Khmer Rouge proved unable to topple the new Vietnamese-controlled regime in Phnom Penh, it did nonetheless keep the country in a permanent state of insecurity. The new administration was propped up by a substantial Vietnamese military force and civilian advisory effort.
As events in the 1980s progressed, the main preoccupations of the new regime were survival, restoring the economy, and combating the Khmer Rouge insurgency by military and by political means. The fostering of activity to meet these imperatives and the building of institutions are described in subsequent articles in the History of Cambodia series.

Reference

http://www.answers.com/topic/cambodia-under-pol-pot

Khmer Republic1970-1975

2009-09-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

Formally declared on October 9,1970, the Khmer Republic was a right-wing pro- US military-led government headed by general Lon Nol and prince Sisowath Sirik Matak that took power in the March 18,1970 coup against the then Head of State, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

The main causes of the coup were Norodom Sihanouk's toleration of North Vietnamese activity within Cambodia's borders, allowing heavily-armed Vietnamese Communist outfits de facto control over vast areas of eastern Cambodia . Another important factor was the dire state of the Cambodian economy, an indirect result of Sihanouk's policies of pursuing neutrality through virulent anti-americanism.

With the removal of Sihanouk, the existing Kingdom of Cambodia became a republic, although the throne had been officially vacant for some years since the death of King Norodom Suramarit. The character of the new regime was right-wing and nationalist; most significantly, it ended Sihanouk's period of covert cooperation with the North Vietnamese regime and the Viet Cong, and aligned Cambodia with South Vietnam in the ongoing Second Indochina War. The Khmer Republic was opposed within the Cambodian borders by the Front Uni National du Kampuchea or FUNK, a relatively broad alliance between Sihanouk, his supporters, and the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The insurgency itself was conducted by the CPNLAF, the Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces: they were backed by both the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the National Liberation Front (NLF, better known as the Viet Cong), who occupied parts of Cambodia as part of their ongoing war with the South Vietnamese.
Despite the strongly militaristic character of the Khmer Republic, and quantities of military and financial aid from the United States, its army (the Force Armée Nationale Khmère, or FANK) was poorly trained and unable to defeat either the CPNLAF or the Vietnamese forces of the PAVN and NLF. The Republic eventually fell on 17 April 1975, when the Cambodian communists took Phnom Penh.

The coup

For more details on this topic, see Cambodian coup of 1970.Sihanouk himself claimed that the coup was the result of an alliance between his longstanding enemy, the exiled right-wing nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh, the politician Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak (depicted by Sihanouk as a disgruntled rival claimant to the Cambodian throne) and the CIA, who wished to install a more US-friendly regime. There is in fact little if any evidence of CIA involvement in the coup, although it seems that sections of the US military establishment - notably the Army Special Forces - may have had some involvement in terms of offering support and training to the plotters after being approached by Lon Nol.

While Sihanouk was out of the country on a trip to France, anti-Vietnamese rioting took place in Phnom Penh, during which the North Vietnamese and NLF embassies were sacked. It seems likely that this rioting was at least tolerated, and possibly actively organised, by Lon Nol, the Prime Minister, and his deputy Prince Sirik Matak. On 12 March, the prime minister closed the port of Sihanouk Ville - through which weapons were being smuggled to the NLF - to the North Vietnamese and issued an impossible ultimatum to them. All PAVN/NLF forces were to withdraw from Cambodian soil within 72 hours (on 15 March) or face military action.
Despite these actions, which directly contradicted Sihanouk's policy of partial tolerance of North Vietnamese activity, it appears that Lon Nol himself had great personal reluctance to depose the Head of State: he initially may merely have wanted Sihanouk to apply more pressure to the North Vietnamese. He initially refused to commit to the plan; to convince him, Sirik Matak - who appears to have had a coup in mind from the start - played him a tape-recorded press conference from Paris, in which Sihanouk threatened to execute them both on his return to Phnom Penh. However, the Prime Minister remained uncertain, with the result that Sirik Matak, accompanied by three army officers, compelled a weeping Lon Nol to sign the necessary documents at gunpoint.
A vote was taken in the National Assembly on 18 March under the direction of In Tam, in which Sihanouk was stripped of his power: Lon Nol assumed the powers of the Head of State on an emergency basis. On 28 and 29 March there were large-scale popular demonstrations in favour of Sihanouk in several provincial cities, but Lon Nol's forces suppressed them with great brutality, causing several hundred deaths. A number of government officials were murdered by demonstrators, including Lon Nol's brother Lon Nol.
Foreign regimes were initially uncertain as to the level of support to give to the new government. The North Vietnamese continued to hold talks with Lon Nol regarding the reinstatement of the cancelled trade agreement, though subsequent events meant that these were soon to come to an end.

Declaration of the Khmer Republic and the formation of

The relatively small royal army, which at the time of the coup had around 35,000 troops (in accordance with Sihanouk's stated policy of neutrality), was greatly expanded. Reorganised as FANK, the republican army, it had grown to around 150,000 men as early as the end of 1970, mainly through voluntary enlistment as Lon Nol sought to capitalise on a wave of anti-Vietnamese sentiment. The US also implemented its programme of structured military aid and assistance in training, and flew in several thousand Khmer Serei and Khmer Kampuchea Krom militia, trained in South Vietnamese bases. The Joint Chiefs insisted on massive expansion of FANK to over 200,000 men, despite concerns at the severe negative effect this would have on Cambodia's economy, while the Military Equipment Delivery Team, led by General Theodore C. Mataxis, demanded the 'Americanisation' of the army's French-influenced internal structures, in spite of the chaos this caused in the supply chain.
Despite the US aid, FANK (commanded by General Sosthene Fernandez) was seriously handicapped by corruption, particularly by officers claiming salaries for non-existent troops, and military incompetence. Although one of the FANK commanders - the former rebel Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey, who was coaxed out of military retirement by Lon Nol to raise FANK's 13th Brigade - was to have considerable success in 'pacifying' the area around the strategic Highway 4 and the Kirirom Plateau, the majority of its generals had little military experience or ability. The large-scale FANK offensives against the Vietnamese, Operation Chenla I and II, ended in heavy defeat despite the conspicuous bravery of the individual Khmer infantrymen.

FANK

The most significant immediate effect of the coup was the Cambodian Campaign of April - July 1970, in which the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), backed by US troops, entered eastern Cambodia (the "Parrot's Beak") to attack North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces operating there. Despite this assault, many of the communist forces escaped westward, deeper into Cambodia, or to the rural areas of the north-east, where they would provide support for the insurgency against Lon Nol.
Lon Nol's immediate reaction was to condemn the action as a violation of Cambodian territory. He later informed Alexander Haig that his country had been placed in serious danger as a result; when Haig told him that American ground forces would not be used to assist the Cambodian army, but that (in accordance with the Nixon Doctrine) a programme of aid would be given instead, Lon Nol openly wept.
On October 9, Sihanouk was condemned to death in absentia by a military court; his mother, Queen Kossamak - the symbolic representative of the monarchy under Sihanouk's regime - was placed under house arrest, and his wife Monique was sentenced to life imprisonment. The new regime simultaneously declared the Khmer Republic, and a new constitution was eventually to be adopted in 1972. Sihanouk, in the meantime, had formed GRUNK, a Beijing-based government-in-exile incorporating the communists and dedicated to the Republic's overthrow; he declared Lon Nol to be a "complete idiot" and characterised Sirik Matak as "nasty, perfidious, a lousy bastard".

Political history of the Khmer Republic

For more details on this topic, see Cambodian Civil War.

As well as fighting the Cambodian Civil War against the pro-Sihanouk and communist insurgents and the North Vietnamese, the Khmer Republic faced considerable internal problems. Sihanouk's domination of political life during the 1950s and 60s meant that there were few confident or experienced Cambodian politicians. Almost from the start, the Republic was plagued by many of the same political divisions and infighting that had marked Sihanouk's regime; primary among these was a damaging power struggle between Lon Nol and Sirik Matak. Sirik Matak had been acting Prime Minister during the Republic's first year, when Lon Nol's health had been extremely poor, but had engendered considerable resentment due to his administrative style and royal connections; there was also growing frustration amongst young, urban Cambodians at the continued corruption and inefficiency of the regime. On Lon Nol's return from hospital in Hawaii in April 1971, he instigated a cabinet crisis by resigning, providing a means to dissolve the government, with the probable encouragement of his brother Lon Non (a figure of considerable influence, especially with the military). After much political squabbling, a new cabinet was formed, though Sirik Matak continued as acting premier with the title of "Prime Minister-Delegate". On 16 October 1971, Lon Nol took action to strip the National Assembly of legislative power, and ordered it to write a new constitution, claiming that these actions were necessary to prevent anarchy; this provoked a protest by In Tam and 400 Buddhist monks.

1972: Removal of Sirik Matak

By March 1972, Lon Nol and his brother had managed to drive Sirik Matak from power. After Sirik Matak had sacked Keo An, a dissident academic, Lon Non organised a series of vocal student demonstrations against him calling for his removal. Sirik Matak resigned, and (ostensibly for his 'protection') was placed under effective house arrest. Lon Nol used the crisis to oust the Head of State, Cheng Heng , and took over the role himself, appointing the longstanding anti-Sihanouk nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh as Prime Minister.
Later that year, Lon Nol announced he would hold presidential elections, and was surprised when In Tam and Keo An - the latter a reputed Sihanoukist - not only announced that they would run, but then refused to withdraw. The elections, despite an inevitable victory for Lon Nol, revealed considerable dissatisfaction with the government even though they had been rigged in Lon Nol's favour: had they been fair, it is likely that In Tam would have won.
The political situation continued to unravel throughout 1972: both opposition parties (In Tam's Democratic Party and Sirik Matak's Republican Party) refused to contest the elections to the National Assembly held in September, leading to a sweeping victory for Lon Non's Socio-Republican Party (Sangkum Sathéaranak Râth). There were a growing number of terrorist attacks in the capital, one of which was directed at Son Ngoc Thanh. Thanh - whose last political act was to ban Sirik Matak's newspaper - was then forced to resign, going back into South Vietnamese exile, and was replaced by the moderate leftist Hang Thum Hak. While the Khmer Republic's government was being weakened by infighting, North Vietnamese forces - who had previously carried out much of the fighting against FANK, as in Operation Chenla I and II - gradually and deliberately scaled back their presence within Cambodian borders, leaving mainly logistical and support staff. Their place was taken by native Cambodian communist forces of the CPNLAF, which had been greatly increased when Sihanouk gave his support to the insurgency, rural Cambodians remaining overwhelmingly pro-Sihanouk.

1973: Ceasefire and the suspension of the National Assembly

The Paris Peace Accords of early 1973 seemed to offer a temporary respite from the civil war; Lon Nol declared a unilateral ceasefire, despite FANK's very weak position on the ground. There were in fact a few contacts between some of the more moderate elements of the Khmer Rouge communists - notably Hou Yuon - and the Republic. The North Vietnamese pressured the Cambodian communists to accept the terms of the peace accords; their interests lay more in keeping the war active at a low level (tying down South Vietnamese troops in the process) than in an outright victory for the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge leadership, however, remained intransigent.
The fighting resumed on the night of 7 February 1973, when communist forces attacked the FANK perimeter around the besieged city of Kompong Thom. By April, the Republic regime was in general disarray, with FANK troops refusing to fight and looting their own capital, and the CPNLAF advancing in many areas of the country. In response, the US finally threatened to cut off all aid unless Lon Nol acted to broaden the power base and support of the government - specifically, to reinstate the US ally Sirik Matak - and reduce the influence of his brother Lon Non. Accordingly, on 24 April, Lon Nol announced that the National Assembly would be suspended, and that a Political Council formed of himself, Sirik Matak, Cheng Heng, and In Tam, would effectively rule by decree. The CPNLAF advance on Phnom Penh was eventually halted by American bombing, which caused horrific casualty levels amongst the communist troops. Some commentators state that the experience is likely to have contributed to the brutality shown by the Khmer Rouge cadres in later events.

1974: The fall of Oudong

By early 1974, the Political Council had been sidelined, and Lon Nol was once again ruling alone. The military situation, in the meantime, was deteriorating further. Communist forces came within shelling distance of Phnom Penh, and captured the former royal capital of Oudong (Odongk) in March: they 'evacuated' its population - shooting government officials and teachers - and destroyed or burnt much of the town. There was a brief improvement as the year progressed, however, as FANK retook Oudong, and was able to secure supply routes through Lake Tonle Sap.

End of the regime

Despite this, the Khmer Republic did not survive the 1975 dry season offensive. The communist forces had by this point surrounded the capital, whose population had been vastly increased by refugees from the fighting; Lon Nol, who was extremely superstitious, ordered that consecrated sand be spread around the city from helicopters in order to protect it. Though FANK was by this time fighting with extreme tenacity, and the Khmer Rouge soldiers were suffering from poor morale, malaria, and even higher rates of casualties than FANK, fresh supplies of arms and ammunition from China gave them the impetus to overrun the Republic's remaining outposts. Proposed peace negotiations repeatedly stalled as Sihanouk refused to deal with Lon Nol directly, requesting his removal as a precondition. A plan proposed by Etienne Manac'h, the French Ambassador to China, in which Sihanouk would return to Cambodia as the head of a national unity government (leading to the likely immediate defection of a large proportion of the Khmer Rouge's peasant soldiers), failed to materialise.
On April 1, 1975, Lon Nol resigned and fled the country into exile: FANK almost immediately disintegrated. While Sirik Matak, Long Boret, Lon Non and several other politicians remained in the capital in an attempt to negotiate a ceasefire, the Khmer Rouge finally entered the city on April 17; within a few days they had executed many representatives of the old regime, and the Khmer Republic had effectively come to an end. During its brief existence it had received almost exactly one million dollars of US military and economic aid a day.
The final area held by the Republic in any form was the Preah Vihear Temple in the Dangrek Mountains, which FANK forces still occupied in late April 1975. It was finally taken by the Khmer Rouge on 22 May.

Reference
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Cambodian coup of 1970

2009-09-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Cambodian coup of 1970 refers to the removal of the Cambodian Head of State, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, after a vote in the National Assembly on 18 March 1970. Emergency powers were subsequently invoked by the Prime Minister Lon Nol, who became effective head of state. The coup led ultimately to the proclamation of the Khmer Republic (République khmère) later that year, and was a turning point in the Cambodian Civil Cambodia Civil War. Not a monarchy any longer, Cambodia received the semi-official appellation "État du Cambodge" (State of Cambodia) in the intervening six months after the coup, until the republic was proclaimed.
It also marked the point at which Cambodia became substantially involved in the Second Indochina War, as Lon Nol issued an ultimatum to Vietnamese forces to leave Cambodia.

Sihanouk Deposed as Head of State

In March 1970, while Sihanouk was touring Europe, the Soviet Union and China, large-scale anti-Vietnamese demonstrations erupted in Phnom Penh. Crowds attacked the North Vietnamese Vietnamese and Viet Cong (Provision Revolutionary Govenment of the Republic of South Vietnam ) embassies. Sihanouk initially gave a certain degree of support to the demonstrators; he hoped Moscow and Beijing would pressure North Vietnam to reduce its presence in Cambodia. Indeed, it has even been suggested (by William Shawcross and others) that Sihanouk and Lon Nol may have planned the first demonstrations in order to give them more political leverage against Hanoi.
The riots, however, escalated beyond the government's control - although this was likely done with a degree of encouragement from Lon Nol and Sirik Matak - and the embassy was sacked. Inside, a "contingency plan" was allegedly found for the communists to occupy Cambodia. On 12 March, Sirik Matak cancelled Sihanouk's trade agreement with North Vietnam; Lon Nol closed the port of Sihanoukville to the North Vietnamese and issued an impossible ultimatum to them: all PAVN and NLF forces were to withdraw from Cambodian soil within 72 hours (on 15 March) or face military action. When, by the morning of March 16, it was clear that this absurd demand had not been met, some 30,000 youths gathered outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh to protest against the Vietnamese presence.
From this point, events were to move with increasing rapidity. On the same day, the Cambodian Secretary of State for Defence, Colonel Oum Mannorine (Sihanouk's brother-in-law), was scheduled to be questioned by the national legislature on allegations of corruption; the proceedings were adjourned to hear the demonstrators' resolutions. According to Sihanouk, Mannorine had received information that Lon Nol and Sirik Matak were about to precipitate a coup; a group of Mannorine's men, under the command of Phnom Penh's Chief of Police Major Buor Horl, attempted to arrest the plotters, but it was by then too late. Mannorine, and other key security personnel loyal to Sihanouk, were placed under arrest. After the Assembly adjourned for the day, Sihanouk's mother Queen Kossamak, at Sihanouk's request, summoned Lon Nol and Sirik Matak to the Royal Palace and asked them to end the demonstrations.
It appears to have been sometime during 16 or 17 March that Sirik Matak finally swayed Lon Nol to remove Sihanouk from the government. Lon Nol, who until that point may have been merely hoping that Sihanouk would end his relations with North Vietnam, showed some reluctance to take action against the Head of State: to convince him, Sirik Matak allegedly played him a tape-recorded press conference from , in which Sihanouk threatened to execute them both on his return to Phnom Penh^] However, the Prime Minister remained uncertain, with the result that Sirik Matak, accompanied by three army officers, finally compelled a weeping Lon Nol to sign the necessary documents at gunpoint.
The next day - 18 March - the army took up positions around the capital, and a debate was held within the National Assembly under In Tam's direction. One member of the Assembly (Kim Phon, later to be killed by pro-Sihanouk demonstrators in Kompong Cham) walked out of the proceedings in protest, though was not harmed at the time. The rest of the assembly voted unanimously to invoke Article 122 of the Cambodian constitution which withdrew confidence in Sihanouk. Lon Nol took over the powers of the Head of State on an emergency basis, while the position itself was taken by the President of the General Assembly, Cheng Henh. In Tam was confirmed as President of the Sangkum. The coup had, therefore, followed essentially constitutional forms rather than being a blatant military takeover. These events marked the foundation of the Khmer Republic.

Demonstrations against the coup

On March 23, Sihanouk (via Beijing Radio) called for a general uprising against Lon Nol. Large-scale popular demonstrations calling for Sihanouk's return began in Kompong Cham,Takeo Province, and Kampot Province. The demonstrations in Kompong Cham became particularly violent, with two National Assembly deputies, Sos Saoun and Kim Phon, being killed by demonstrators on 26 March after driving to the town to negotiate. Lon Nol's brother, police official Lon Nol, was set upon in the nearby town of Tonle Bet by plantation workers and was also killed.
The demonstrations were suppressed with extreme brutality by the Cambodian army; there were several hundred deaths and thousands of arrests. Some witnesses spoke of tanks being used against crowds of unarmed civilians.

Aftermath

While Lon Nol initially continued dialogue with the North Vietnamese, who hoped to renegotiate their agreements, the American and South Vietnamese invasion of south-eastern Cambodia in the Cambodian Campaign of the following month was to radically and irrevocably alter Cambodia's involvement in the Second Indochina War.

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ជាភាសាអង់គ្លេស

Post-Independence Cambodia 1954-1970( Cambodia under Sihanouk)

2009-09-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

The First administration of Sihanouk from 1954–1970 was an especially significant time in the history of Cambodia.Norodom Sihanouk continues to be one of the most controversial figures in Southeast Asia's turbulent, and often tragic, postwar history. Admirers view him as one of the country's great patriots, whose insistence on strict neutrality kept Cambodia out of the maelstrom of war and out of the revolution in neighboring Vietnam for more than fifteen years before he was deposed by his close associate, Lon Nol.

The Geneva Conference and Viet Minh Incursion

Although Cambodia had achieved independence by late 1953, its military situation remained unsettled. Noncommunist factions of the Khmer Issarak had joined the government, but pro- communist Viet Minh and United Issarak Front activities increased at the very time French Union forces were stretched thin elsewhere. In April 1954, several Viet Minh battalions crossed the border into Cambodia. Royalist forces engaged them but could not force their complete withdrawal. In part, the communists were attempting to strengthen their bargaining position at the Geneva Conference that had been scheduled to begin in late April.

The Geneva Conference was attended by representatives of Cambodia, North Vietnam, the Associated State of Vietnam (the predecessor of the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam), Laos, the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and the United States. One goal of the conference was to restore a lasting peace in Indochina. The discussions on Indochina began on May 8, 1954. The North Vietnamese attempted to get representation for the resistance government that had been established in the south, but failed. On July 21,1954, the conference reached an agreement calling for a cessation of hostilities in Indochina. With respect to Cambodia, the agreement stipulated that all Viet Minh military forces be withdrawn within ninety days and that Cambodian resistance forces be demobilized within thirty days. In a separate agreement signed by the Cambodian representative, the French and the Viet Minh agreed to withdraw all forces from Cambodian soil by October 1954. In exchange for the withdrawal of Viet Minh forces, the communist representatives in Geneva wanted full neutrality for Cambodia and for Laos that would prevent the basing of United States United States military forces in these countries. On the eve of the conference's conclusion, however, the Cambodian representative, Sam Sary, insisted that, if Cambodia were to be genuinely independent, it must not be prohibited from seeking whatever military assistance it desired (Cambodia had earlier appealed to Washington for military aid). The conference accepted this point over North Vietnam's strenuous objections. In the final agreement, Cambodia accepted a watered-down neutrality, vowing not to join any military alliance "not in conformity with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations" or to allow the basing of foreign military forces on its territory "as long as its security is not threatened."
The conference agreement established the International Control Commission (officially called the International Commission for Supervision and Control) in all the Indochinese countries. Made up of representatives from Canada, Poland and India, it supervised the cease-fire, the withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of Prisoners of war, and overall compliance with the terms of the agreement. The French and most of the Viet Minh forces were withdrawn on schedule in October 1954.

Domestic Developments

The Geneva agreement also stipulated that general elections should be held in Cambodia during 1955 and that the International Control Commission should monitor them to ensure fairness. Sihanouk was more determined than ever to defeat the Democrats (who, on the basis of their past record, were expected to win the election). The king attempted unsuccessfully to have the constitution amended. On March 2,1955, he announced his abdication in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit. Assuming the title of samdech (prince), Sihanouk explained that this action was necessary in order to give him a free hand to engage in politics.
To challenge the Democrats, Prince Sihanouk established his own political machine, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community), commonly referred to as the Sangkum, which, despite its name, contained significan right-wing elements that were virulently anticommunist. The Sangkum's emergence in early 1955 unified most right-wing groups under the prince's auspices. In the September election, Sihanouk's new party decisively defeated the Democrats, the Khmer Independence Party of Son Ngoc Thanh, and the leftist Pracheachon Party, winning 83% of the vote and all of the seats in the National Assembly.
The results of the 1955 election have been attributed to fraud and intimidation. Voters were intimidated by a voting system involving colored pieces of paper that had to be put into a box in full view of Sihanouk's political figures, soldiers and local police. In many cases, voting results were simply falsified as in the case where a district that had been a Viet Minh stronghold for years did not return a single vote for the far left. Writer Philip Short points to a 1957 statement by Sihanouk admitting that thirty six electoral districts had voted Pracheachon or Democrat majority whereas the official results said that they had won none.
Khmer nationalism, loyalty to the monarch, struggle against injustice and corruption, and protection of the Buddhist religion were major themes in Sangkum ideology. The party adopted a particularly conservative interpretation of Buddhism, common in the Theravada countries of Southeast Asia, that the social and economic inequalities among people were legitimate because of the workings of Karma. For the poorer classes, virtuous and obedient conduct opened up the possibility of being born into a higher station in a future life. The appeal to religion won the allegiance of the country's many Buddhist priests, who were a particularly influential group in rural villages.
In August 1957, Sihanouk summoned the leaders of the Democrat party to what he called a "debate" at the Royal Palace. They were subjected to five hours of public humiliation. After the event was over, the participants were dragged from their cars and beaten with rifle butts by Sihanouk's police and army.
Around the same time, the Pracheachon party put up five candidates for election. Sihanouk travelled in person to each district and the government mounted a full campaign against the party. The national radio service accused the party of being Vietnamese puppets. Posters showing supposed atrocities were hung in the districts. Eventually four candidates were intimidated into dropping out of the election. The only one who stayed in was credited by government officials with 396 votes out of an electorate of 30,000 in an area where Pracheachon was known to have deep support.
As the 1960s began, organized political opposition to Sihanouk and the Sangkum virtually had been largely driven underground. According to Vickery, the Democratic Party disbanded in 1957 after its leaders--who had been beaten by soldiers--requested the privilege of joining the Sangkum.
Despite its defense of the status quo, especially the interests of rural elites, the Sangkum was not an exclusively right-wing organization. Sihanouk invited a number of leftists into his party and government to provide a balance to the right-wing. Among these were future leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Hu Nim and Hou Yuon served in several ministries between 1958 and 1963, and Khieu Samphan served briefly as secretary of state for commerce in 1963.
But the independent parties of the left were generally targeted for destruction. On October 9,1959 the editor of the Pracheachon Weekly Paper, Nop Bophann was shot to death outside his office by state security police. In 1960, some two thousand people were detained for political reasons in a holding camp outside the capital. State Security cases were handled by a military tribunal from which there was no appeal. The tribunal handed down over thirty death decrees in its first six months of operation and it was widely known that the verdicts were the personal decision of Sihanouk himself.
In 1960, the editor of the paper l'Observateur, was beaten in the street, stripped naked and photographed by members of the security police a few hundred yards from the Central Police Station. The editor reported the attack to the police. When the National Assembly summoned the minister responsible to explain the incident, he said it was the job the police to protect the opponents of the government. The minister then proceeded to name members of the National Assembly who he considered to be in the same category of opponents. One of the named deputies, Uch Ven, tabled a censure motion that had been drawn up against the minister. Sihanouk issued a statement afterward attacking the members of the National Assembly for their hostile attitude toward the police. Within days, l'Observateur and two other papers were closed by the government, fifty people were detained indefinitely for questioning and the political director of Sihanouk's own newspaper was fired for an editorial objecting to heavy-handed political intimidation.
In July 1962, one of the leading leftists in the country, Tou Samouth was grabbed by the security police while seeking medicine for his child in a street market. He was held in secret and tortured for several days. He was eventually simply murdered with his body dumped into a wasteland in the Stung Meancheay district of Phnom Penh.
In March 1963, Sihanouk published a list of thirty four leftists. After denouncing them as cowards, hypocrites, saboteurs, subversive agents and traitors, he demanded that they form a government for the country. Shortly after, they were brought into the presence of Sihanouk and each signed a statement saying that he was only man capable of leading the country. After the incident, police officers were posted outside the residences and places of employment of each of the named men. They were essentially under permanent police observation.
The results of 1962 and 1963 were to drive the underground leftist movement out of the cities and into the countryside. Even underground politics or proxy actions through above-ground parties against the government had effectively ceased to be possible.
Sihanouk's attitude toward the left was often cynical. He realized that his own political position was dependent on carefully balancing off the left in Cambodia against the right. If one side ever defeated the other, the next step of either party would be to end Sihanouk's role in ruling the country. He often declared that if he had not been a prince, he would have become a revolutionary. Sihanouk's chronic suspicion of United States intentions in the region, his perception of revolutionary China as Cambodia's most valuable ally, his respect for such prominent and capable leftists as Hou, Hu, and Khieu, and his vague notions of "royal socialism" all impelled him to experiment with socialist policies. It should also be recognized that each move toward socialism gave Sihanouk and his inner circle the able to reward each other with lucrative political "spoils" and Patronage. In 1963 the prince announced the Nationalization of banking, foreign trade, and insurance as a means of reducing foreign control of the economy. In 1964 a state trading company, the National Export-Import Corporation, was established to handle foreign commerce. The declared purposes of nationalization were to give Khmer nationals, rather than Chinese or Vietnamese, a greater role in the nation's trade, to eliminate middlemen and to conserve foreign exchange through the limiting of unnecessary luxury imports. As a result of this policy, foreign investment quickly disappeared, and a nepotistic "crony socialism" emerged somewhat similar to the "crony capitalism" that evolved in the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos . Lucrative state monopolies were parceled out to Sihanouk's most loyal retainers, who "milked" them for cash.
Sihanouk was headed steadily for a collision with the right. To counter charges of one-man rule, the prince declared that he would relinquish control of candidate selection and would permit more than one Sangkum candidate to run for each seat in the September 1966 National Assembly election. The returns showed a surprising upsurge in the conservative vote at the expense of more moderate and left-wing elements, although Hou, Hu, and Khieu were reelected by their constituencies. General Lon Nol became prime minister.
Out of concern that the right wing might cause an irreparable split within the Sangkum and might challenge his domination of the political system, Sihanouk set up a "counter government" (like the British "shadow cabinet") packed with his most loyal personal followers and with leading leftists, hoping that it would exert a restraining influence on Lon Nol. Leftists accused the general of being groomed by Western intelligence agencies to lead a bloody anticommunist coup d'etat similar to that of General Suharto in Indonesia. Injured in an automobile accident, Lon Nol resigned in April 1967. Sihanouk replaced him with a trusted centrist, Son Sann. This was the twenty-third successive Sangkum cabinet and government to have been appointed by Sihanouk since the party was formed in 1955.

Nonaligned Foreign Policy

Sihanouk's nonaligned foreign policy, which emerged in the months following the Geneva Conference, cannot be understood without reference to Cambodia's past history of foreign subjugation and its very uncertain prospects for survival as the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam intensified. Soon after the 1954 Geneva Conference, Sihanouk expressed some interest in integrating Cambodia into the framework of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which included Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam within the "treaty area," although none of these states was a signatory. But meetings in late 1954 with India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burma's Premier U Nu made him receptive to the appeal of nonalignment. Moreover, the prince was somewhat uneasy about a United States-dominated alliance that included one old enemy, Thailand, and encompassed another, South Vietnam, each of which offered sanctuary to anti-Sihanouk dissidents.
At the Bandung Conference in April 1955, Sihanouk held private meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai of china and Foreign Minister Pham Van Dong of North Vietnam. Both assured him that their countries would respect Cambodia's independence and territorial integrity. His experience with the French, first as a client, then as the self-proclaimed leader of the "royal crusade for independence," apparently led him to conclude that the United States, like France, would eventually be forced to leave Southeast Asia. From this perspective, the Western presence in Indochina was only a temporary interruption of the dynamics of the region--continued Vietnamese (and perhaps even Thai) expansion at Cambodia's expense. Accommodation with North Vietnam and friendly ties with China during the late 1950s and the 1960s were tactics designed to counteract these dynamics. China accepted Sihanouk's overtures and became a valuable counterweight to growing Vietnamese and Thai pressure on Cambodia.
Cambodia's relations with China were based on mutual interests. Sihanouk hoped that China would restrain the Vietnamese and the Thai from acting to Cambodia's detriment. The Chinese, in turn, viewed Cambodia's nonalignment as vital in order to prevent the encirclement of their country by the United States and its allies. When Premier Zhou Enlai visited Phnom Penh in 1956, he asked the country's Chinese minority, numbering about 300,000, to cooperate in Cambodia's development, to stay out of politics, and to consider adopting Cambodian citizenship. This gesture helped to resolve a sensitive issue--the loyalty of Cambodian Chinese--that had troubled the relationship between Phnom Penh and Beijing. In 1960 the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship and Nonaggression. After the Sino-Soviet rift Sihanouk's ardent friendship with China contributed to generally cooler ties with Moscow.
China was not the only large power to which Sihanouk looked for patronage, however. Cambodia's quest for security and nation-building assistance impelled the prince to search beyond Asia and to accept help from all donors as long as there was no impingement upon his country's sovereignty. With this end in mind, Sihanouk turned to the United States in 1955 and negotiated a military aid agreement that secured funds and equipment for the Royal Khmer Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales Khmères--FARK). A United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) was established in Phnom Penh to supervise the delivery and the use of equipment that began to arrive from the United States. By the early 1960s, aid from Washington constituted 30% of Cambodia's defense budget and 14% of total budget inflows (First Indochina War).
Relations with the United States, however, proved to be stormy. United States officials both in Washington and in Phnom Penh frequently underestimated the prince and considered him to be an erratic figure with minimal understanding of the threat posed by Asian communism. Sihanouk easily reciprocated this mistrust because several developments aroused his suspicion of United States intentions toward his country.
One of these developments was the growing United States influence within the Cambodian armed forces. The processing of equipment deliveries and the training of Cambodian personnel had forged close ties between United States military advisers and their Cambodian counterparts. Military officers of both nations also shared apprehensions about the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Sihanouk considered FARK to be Washington's most powerful constituency in his country. The prince also feared that a number of high-ranking, rightist FARK officers led by Lon Nol were becoming too powerful and that, by association with these officers, United States influence in Cambodia was becoming too deeply rooted.
A second development included the repetition of overflights by United States and South Vietnamese military aircraft within Cambodian airspace and border incursions by South Vietnamese troops in hot pursuit of Viet Cong insurgents who crossed into Cambodian territory when military pressure upon them became too sustained. As the early 1960s wore on, this increasingly sensitive issue contributed to the deterioration of relations between Phnom Penh and Washington.
A third development was Sihanouk's own belief that he had been targeted by United States intelligence agencies for replacement by a more pro-Western leader. Evidence to support this suspicion came to light in 1959 when the government discovered a plot to overthrow Sihanouk. The conspiracy, often known as the " Bankok Plot", involved several Khmer leaders suspected of American connections. Among them were Sam Sary, a leader of right-wing Khmer Serei troops in South Vietnam; Son Ngoc Thanh, the early nationalist leader once exiled into Thailand; and Dap Chhoun, the military governor of Siem Reap Province. Another alleged plot involved Dap Chuon's establishment of a "free" state that would have included Siemreab Province and Kampong Thum (Kampong Thom) Province and the southern areas of Laos that were controlled by the rightist Laotian prince, Boun Oum.

These developments, magnified by Sihanouk's abiding suspicions, eventually undermined Phnom Penh's relations with Washington. In November 1963, the prince charged that the United States was continuing to support the subversive activities of the Khmer Serei in Thailand and in South Vietnam, and he announced the immediate termination of Washington's aid program to Cambodia. Relations continued to deteriorate, and the final break came in May 1965 amid increasing indications of airspace violations by South Vietnamese and by United States aircraft and of ground fighting between Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops and Viet Cong insurgents in the Cambodian border areas.
In the meantime, Cambodia's relations with North Vietnam and with South Vietnam, as well as the rupture with Washington, reflected Sihanouk's efforts to adjust to geopolitical realities in Southeast Asia and to keep his country out of the escalating conflict in neighboring South Vietnam. In the early to mid-1960s, this effort required a tilt toward Hanoi because the government in Saigon tottered on the brink of anarchy. In the cities, the administration of Ngo Dinh Diem and the military regimes that succeeded it had become increasingly ineffectual and unstable, while in the countryside the government forces were steadily losing ground to the Hanoi-backed insurgents.
To observers in Phnom Penh, South Vietnam's short-term viability was seriously in doubt, and this compelled a new tack in Cambodian foreign policy. First, Cambodia severed diplomatic ties with Saigon in August 1963. The following March, Sihanouk announced plans to establish diplomatic relations with North Vietnam and to negotiate a border settlement directly with Hanoi. These plans were not implemented quickly, however, because the North Vietnamese told the prince that any problem concerning Cambodia's border with South Vietnam would have to be negotiated directly with the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NFLSVN). Cambodia opened border talks with the front in mid-1966, and the latter recognized the inviolability of Cambodia's borders a year later. North Vietnam quickly followed suit. Cambodia was the first foreign government to recognize the NFLSVN's Provisional Revolutionary Government after it was established in June 1969. Sihanouk was the only foreign head of state to attend the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam's deceased leader, in Hanoi three months later.
In 1965, Sihanouk negotiated a deal with China and North Vietnam. Whereas before Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces had temporarily move into Cambodian territory, the deal allowed them to build permanent military facilities on Cambodian soil. Cambodia also opened its ports to shipments of military supplies from China and the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese. In exchange for these concessions, large amounts of money passed into the hands of the Cambodian elite. In particular, deals were made where China would purchase rice at inflated prices from the Cambodian government. While Sihanouk talked neutrality in public, he had effectively pushed Cambodia directly into the Vietnam conflict.
After making friends with North Vietnam and China, Sihanouk turned politically to the right and unleashed a wave of repression throughout the country. The repression drove most of the political left in the country underground. While Sihanouk's deal with China and Vietnam in the short term kept both countries from arming the Cambodian left, it did not prevent the Cambodian left from launching an unsupported rebellion on its own.
In the late 1960s, while preserving relations with China and with North Vietnam, Sihanouk sought to restore a measure of equilibrium by improving Cambodia's ties with the West. This shift in course by the prince represented another adjustment to prevailing conditions in Asia. The Chinese had become almost impossible to deal with because of the turmoil associated with the cultural revolution. The North Vietnamese presence in Eastern Cambodia had grown so large that it was destabilizing Cambodia politically and economically. Further, when the Cambodian left went underground in the late 1960s, Sihanouk had to make concessions to the right in the absence of any force that he could play off against them. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were increasing their use of sanctuaries in Cambodia, which also served as the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, their logistical resupply route originating in both North Vietnam and Cambodia's own ports. Cambodian neutrality in the conflict no longer existed, and China, preoccupied with its Cultural Revolution, did not intercede with Hanoi. On Cambodia's eastern border, South Vietnam, surprisingly, had not collapsed, even in the face of the communist Tet Offensive in 1968, and President Nguyen Van Thieu's government was bringing a measure of stability to the war-ravaged country. As the government in Phnom Penh began to feel keenly the loss of economic and military aid from the United States, which had totaled about US$400 million between 1955 and 1963, it began to have second thoughts about the rupture with Washington. The unavailability of American equipment and spare parts was exacerbated by the poor quality and the small numbers of Soviet, Chinese, and French substitutes.
In late 1967 and in early 1968, Sihanouk signaled that he would raise no objection to hot pursuit of communist forces by South Vietnamese or by United States troops into Cambodian territory. Washington, in the meantime, accepted the recommendation of the United States Military Assistance Command--Vietnam (MACV) and, beginning in March 1969, ordered a series of airstrikes (dubbed the Menu series) against Cambodian sanctuaries used by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Whether or not these bombing missions were authorized aroused considerable controversy, and assertions by the Nixon administration that Sihanouk had "allowed" or even "encouraged" them were disputed by critics such as British journalist William Shawcross. But in retrospect, Sihanouk allowing US bombing as a counter-weight to his previous decision to allow the Vietnamese to establish base areas seems consistent with his policy strategy in that US was the only force he could use as a counter-weight to the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia.
On a diplomatic level, however, the Menu airstrikes did not impede bilateral relations from moving forward. In April 1969, Nixon sent a note to the prince affirming that the United States recognized and respected "the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia with its present frontiers." Shortly thereafter, in June 1969, full diplomatic relations were restored between Phnom Penh and Washington.

The Cambodian Left: The Early Phases

The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases: the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese, before World War II; the ten-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar (Pol Pot after 1976) and other future Khmer Rouge leaders gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967-68 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democractic Kampuchea regime, from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.
Much of the movement's history has been shrouded in mystery, largely because successive purges, especially during the Democratic Kampuchea period, have left so few survivors to recount their experiences. One thing is evident, however, the tension between Khmer and Vietnamese was a major theme in the movement's development. In the three decades between the end of World War II and the Khmer Rouge victory, the appeal of communism to Western educated intellectuals (and to a lesser extent its more inchoate attraction for poor peasants) was tempered by the apprehension that the much stronger Vietnamese movement was using communism as an ideological rationale for dominating the Khmer. The analogy between the Vietnamese communists and the Nguyen dynasty, which had legitimized its encroachments in the nineteenth century in terms of the "civilizing mission" of Confucianism, was persuasive. Thus, the new brand of indigenous communism that emerged after 1960 combined nationalist and revolutionary appeals and, when it could afford to, exploited the virulent anti-Vietnamese sentiments of the Khmers. Khmer Rouge literature in the 1970s frequently referred to the Vietnamese as yuon (barbarian), a term dating from the Angkorian period.
In 1930 Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Communist Party by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in Tonkin, in Annam, and in Cochinchina during the late 1920s. The name was changed almost immediately to the ICP, ostensibly to include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, however, all the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement and on developments within Cambodia was negligible.
Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French, and, in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947, the Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. On April 17,1950 (twenty-five years to the day before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh), the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the United Issarak Front was established. Its leader was Son Ngoc Minh (possibly a brother of the nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh), and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups, aided by the Viet Minh, occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952; and, on the eve of the Geneva Conference, they controlled as much as one half of the country.
In 1951 the ICP was reorganized into three national units--the Vietnam Workers' Party, the Lao Itsala, and the KPRP. According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either Khmer Krom, or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia. The party's appeal to indigenous Khmers appears to have been minimal.
According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a "Long March" into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary , Khieu Samphan, and their associates.
During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth), and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line, endorsed by North Vietnam, recognized that Sihanouk, by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French, was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk. In 1959 Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90% of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by 1960.

The Paris Student Group

During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum Province, north of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer," he failed to obtain a degree, but, according to the Catholic priest, Fr. François Ponchaud, he acquired a taste for the classics of French literature as well as for the writings of Marx.
Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary. He was a Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycee Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Institut d'Etudes Politigues de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France. Khieu Samphan, considered "one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation," was born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. In talent he was rivaled by Hou Yuon, born in 1930, who was described as being "of truly astounding physical and intellectual strength," and who studied economics and law. Son Sen, born in 1930, studied education and literature; Hu Nim, born in 1932, studied law.
These men were perhaps the most educated leaders in the history of Asian communism. Two of them, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris; Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. In retrospect, it seems enigmatic that these talented members of the elite, sent to France on government scholarships, could launch the bloodiest and most radical revolution in modern Asian history. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family. An older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King Monivong. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
The intellectual ferment of Paris must have been a dizzying experience for young Khmers fresh from Phnom Penh or the provinces. A number sought refuge in the dogma of orthodox Marxism-Leninism. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party, the most tightly disciplined and Stalinist of Western Europe's communist movements. The party was also very anti-intellectual. In 1951 the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste. The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952 Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary, and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy." A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA. In 1956, however, Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish a new group, the Khmer Students' Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.
The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization, which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development, was that the country had to become self-reliant and had to end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work reflected the influence of a branch of the " dependency theory" school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations.

The KPRP Second Congress

After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham). After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee" were he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement. His comrades, Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing, French-language publication, L'Observateur. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public--as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget." Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.
In late September, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally, Nuon Chea (also known as Long Reth), became deputy general secretary; however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP.
On July 20,1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. In February 1963, at the WPK's second congress, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies, Nuon Chea and Keo Meas, were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.
In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of thirty four leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24 watch by the police.
The region Pol Pot and the others moved to inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965 Pol Pot made a visit of several months duration to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name in secret to the Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party (KCP). The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later.

Reference: http://www.answers.com/topic/cambodia-under-sihanouk