8.7.3
The ordinary people
The survival of the Khmer Empire depended on ordinary people. Despite this, there is very little evidence that describes their lives. We know that they provided the surplus of food that supported the ruling classes. The people also provided labour for the rulers’ building projects and were soldiers for wars. They included peasants, skilled artisans, fishermen, traders and slaves. Peasants Peasants were the largest group among ordinary people. They had the right to farm land without owning it, cultivating rice in fertile valleys and vegetables on slopes. Their lives followed the farming cycle of ploughing and harvesting based on seasons, influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism and animism (spirit beliefs). Peasants lived in villages with thatched-roof houses, lacked tables and chairs, cooked in earthen pots and ate from leaf bowls, as noted by Zhou Daguan.
SkillBuilder discussion Continuity and change 1. Describe the dress of the classical Khmer temple dancer. 2. Temple dancers were regarded as apsaras . What does this mean? 3. What changes can be observed in the societal roles of women from the Angkor period to present-day Cambodia?
Village headmen, typically more prosperous peasants, enforced the ruler’s policies, organised unpaid labour for projects, maintained irrigation, collected taxes and ensured men joined wars. Artisans, fishermen and traders An artisan was a worker who was skilled in a particular craft, such as sculpture, building, pottery, jewellery or metalwork. Artisans were a small proportion of the population but they were essential for their role in building projects and supplying luxury goods for the ruling class, and weapons for war. According to Zhou Daguan, artisans included Thai immigrants who worked in silk production and as tailors. Fishermen harvested the coasts and rivers
SOURCE4 A relief sculpture at the Bayon Temple depicting Khmers at work, probably on the temple
and their lives were mostly as unchanging as those of the peasants. Traders sold goods at markets that moved about between villages. There was also long-distance trade. Zhou Daguan described a range of Chinese goods that were sold at Angkor including paper, combs and needles. Many traders knew something of the world beyond the village because they took caravans across South-East Asia. They were a small group that would grow in importance as trade expanded from the eighteenth century.
SOURCE5 From Milton Osborne, Southeast Asia: an Introductory History , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2004, pp. 59–60
The courts and kings were separate from the cultivators, fishermen and petty traders over whom they ruled. But all these groups inhabited a single, unified world. Just as the serf and the feudal lord of medieval Europe both, in very different ways, sensed themselves to be part of Christendom, so the cultivators or fishermen sensed themselves as being within the same world as their ruler ...
Jacaranda Humanities Alive 8 Victorian Curriculum Third Edition
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