History
The original Ramayana arrived to Southeast Asia from South India along with Hinduism, but its retelling there suggests Buddhist influence. Intricate carvings on the walls of Angkor Wat depict a scene from the Ramayana dating back nearly a millennium. Statues of the poem's heroes were worshiped in temple sanctuaries, akin to the wall paintings at Cambodia's Royal Palace and Wat Bo. The Ramayana has been an important epic in India for at least two thousand years, and Reamker is its Khmer adaptation. The Cambodian version includes incidents and details not found in the Sanskrit original written by the poet Valmiki. An example of a story that does not appear in Indian texts and performance is that of the encounter between Hanuman, the monkey general, and Sovanna Maccha, the mermaid, a favorite of Cambodian audiences.
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“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
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“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)