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The Pre-Indian Basis of Khmer Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

In his review of my book The Making of Greater India (JRAS, 1951, p. 216) Professor Heine-Geldem said that he could not agree that the local genius which moulded Khmer culture and art was that of the Older Megalithic. He considered that the evidence I adduced pointed only to the existence of megalithic elements in the pre-Hindu culture of the Khmers, and he saw no evidence of their ever having had a “full megalithic culture”. He asks why, if megalithic monuments in the plains were destroyed or used for temple building by Indianized Khmers, no such monuments have been reported from among related tribes surviving in the neighbouring hills, where there would have been no incentive to build temples. And he concludes: “I am fully prepared to revise my view if megalithic monuments of the respective type should be discovered in south-eastern Indo-China, but I cannot see how the terraces and stepped pyramids of the Khmer could be derived from megalithic terraces and pyramids, the nearest of which are found at a distance of many hundred miles in the hills of Burma and Assam.” So Professor Heine-Geldern sees nothing in my characterization of the Khmer cultural evolution incompatible with my premise that it is guided by the Older Megalithic genius, but requires further evidence which the present paper will show to be available.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1952

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References

page 118 note 1 Published as the whole volume for 1940 of the Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué.

page 122 note 1 “Les Fouilles d'Oc-èo, Rapport Préliminaire,” by Malleret, Louis, BEFEO, vol. xlv, fasc. 1, 1951, p. 81Google Scholar.

page 122 note 2 Baradat, B., “Lea Sâmrê ou Peâr, population primitive de l'Ouest du Cambodge,” BEFEO, vol. xli, 1941, p. 54Google Scholar.