A Record of Cambodia

Zhou Daguan

3 ideas

1. The Khmer king's procession through Angkor

   Zhou Daguan watched Indravarman III leave the palace behind cavalry, banners and music, then hundreds of palace women carrying candles, gold vessels and lances. Ministers followed on elephants under red parasols, and last came the king, standing on an elephant with the sacred sword in hand, under gold-handled white parasols. Onlookers were required to kneel and touch their foreheads to the ground, so the ruler's legitimacy was staged as a public spectacle of wealth and submission.

2. Women as the commercial class of Angkor

   Zhou reports that trade in Angkor was run by women, who laid out goods on mats in the daily market and paid rent for their spots. Chinese sailors and merchants who settled there married local women partly for their trading skill. A foreign merchant's route into a local economy therefore ran through marriage to the people who controlled exchange.

3. Mundane detail from an outsider's eye

   Zhou writes down everyday matters that temple inscriptions do not cover, such as markets, bathing, sanitation, prices and the goods Chinese traders sold. He also names Khmer religious orders with Chinese terms, so his record of daily life comes to us in a Chinese observer's vocabulary.

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