Monographs, Reports & Research Material

This little volume is a partial fulfillment of what is one of the most urgent tasks of the day: the improvement of the works of the great pioneers in the field, Auguste Barth, Abel Bergaigne, Louis Finot and George Coedès, not forgetting, of course, the Dutch scholar Hendrik Kern, the founder of the Sanskrit epigraphy of Cambodia. Admirable as they are upon the whole, these works indeed contain numerous reading and translation errors.
But why only Sanskrit? Isn’t there also Khmer?

First, by necessity. The saddest fact about Cambodian epigraphy is that, since the death of George Coedès in 1969, not a single scholar has turned up who can read both Sanskrit and Khmer. Sanskrit is also, in a way, more important than Khmer. Not only does Sanskrit appear in epigraphy two centuries before Khmer, but, for nearly a millennium (from the 5th to the 14th century A.D.), it remained the cultural language of the country, with all poetry and philosophy written in Sanskrit, while Khmer was reserved for practical matters. Wrongly regarded as purely historical documents, the Sanskrit inscriptions of Cambodia contain much more than history.

Price: US$ 10 (English)