Precolonial Literary Tradition in Postcolonial Society: Uncovering Khmer Chronicle Epistemology and Authority in the Transition to Independence

By the mid-twentieth century, modern historical consciousness based on Western historiography was well established across Southeast Asian societies. Western-model historical writing was adopted in both content and approaches by local intellectuals and political leaders who turned them into various forms of historical thought that closely corresponded to their contemporary concerns. In Cambodia, the colonial model of historiography, known in Khmer as pravattisātr writing,was also established among local scholars since the 1940s. This type of historical consciousness was used by each subsequent political regime to promote individual leaders, institutions, and state ideology. Yet, the colonial model of history writing was neither the only source for such actions nor the single dominant stream of collective imagination. As far as the precolonial chronicle, or baṅsāvtār, scholarship was concerned, this long-held literary tradition continued to play a crucial role throughout the colonial and postcolonial years in serving as a platform for collective imagination, shared values and beliefs, state propaganda, and nationalist thought. This presentation demonstrates that the chronicle scholarship remained a dominant stream of collective historical imagination throughout the 1950s and early 1970s. While its accounts emerged as a series of chronicle-created myths that encompassed very little sense of historical truth, the chronicle’s hegemonic role can be examined through its involvement in the composition of official textbooks, its significance to and influence on people’s collective values and beliefs, and finally its existence as an attractive source material for the production of popular and royal court cultural elements.