ABSTRACT
Scholars usually place the Angkorean period of Cambodian history between 802 and 1431. The northwestern part of Cambodia, where the state we know as Angkor sprang up in the ninth century, had been inhabited by Khmer-speaking peoples for several hundred years. The assimilation of the Angkorean region into Kambuja-desa occupied more than twenty years. These undocumented years are crucial all the same, for at this time the related notions of nationhood and kingship, remolded to fit the Cambodian scene, appear to have been gathering force. The role of a Cambodian king was not merely to bring rain or to keep everyone's ancestors contentedly at bay. This is the view taken in most of the Sanskrit-language inscriptions of Cambodia that praised kings as embodiments of virtue, actors living above society, associated with the sky, the sun, Indra, Vishnu, and Rama rather than with earthly or ancestral forces. The king was superhuman without being helpful in any practical sense.
