[Footnote 240:  The most popular life of the Buddha in Siamese is called Pa:thomma Somphothiyan, translated by Alabaster in The Wheel of the Law.  But like the Lalita vistara and other Indian lives on which it is modelled it stops short at the enlightenment.  Another well-known religious book is the Traiphum (=Tribhumi), an account of the universe according to Hindu principles, compiled in 1776 from various ancient works.

The Pali literature of Siam is not very large.  Some account of it is given by Coedes in B.E.F.E.O. 1915, III. pp. 39-46.]

[Footnote 241:  When in Bangkok in 1907 I saw in a photographer’s shop a photograph of the procession which escorted these relics to their destination.  It was inscribed “Arrival of Buddha’s tooth from Kandy.”  This shows how deceptive historical evidence may be.  The inscription was the testimony of an eye-witness and yet it was entirely wrong.]

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CAMBOJA[242]

1

The French Protectorate of Camboja corresponds roughly to the nucleus, though by no means to the whole extent of the former Empire of the Khmers.  The affinities of this race have given rise to considerable discussion and it has been proposed to connect them with the Munda tribes of India on one side and with the Malays and Polynesians on the other.[243] They are allied linguistically to the Mons or Talaings of Lower Burma and to the Khasias of Assam, but it is not proved that they are similarly related to the Annamites, and recent investigators are not disposed to maintain the Mon-Annam family of languages proposed by Logan and others.  But the undoubted similarity of the Mon and Khmer languages suggests that the ancestors of those who now speak them were at one time spread over the central and western parts of Indo-China but were subsequently divided and deprived of much territory by the southward invasions of the Thais in the middle ages.

The Khmers also called themselves Kambuja or Kamvuja and their name for the country is still either Srok Kampuchea or Srok Khmer.[244] Attempts have been made to find a Malay origin for this name Kambuja but native tradition regards it as a link with India and affirms that the race is descended from Kambu Svayambhuva and Mera or Pera who was given to him by Siva as wife.[245] This legend hardly proves that the Khmer people came from India but they undoubtedly received thence their civilization, their royal family and a considerable number of Hindu immigrants, so that the mythical ancestor of their kings naturally came to be regarded as the progenitor of the race.  The Chinese traveller Chou Ta-kuan (1296 A.D.) says that the country known to the Chinese as Chen-la is called by the natives Kan-po-chih but that the present dynasty call it Kan-p’u-chih on the authority of Sanskrit (Hsi-fan) works.  The origin of the name Chen-la is unknown.