Jayavarman VII suffers from the modern paparazzi?

You’d think so, given the response to Keng Vannsak‘s recent restatement of the theory that Jayavarman VII may not, after all, have been the most wonderful human being to ever have lived. There’s a lot that goes into the worshipful attitudes people have of Jayavarman VII, ranging from straightfoward nationalism to the symbolism of hope an justice. Whatever one thinks of these things, and I tend to think about them a lot, it remains obvious that such worshipful attitudes, for whatever reason, get in the way of any attempt to systematize and understand Cambodia’s history.

Largely restating a venerable tradition of archaeology and and history, Keng Vannsak argues that Jayavarman’s massive building projects were not a munificent and magnanimous gift to the nation, but a draconian building project that may have so weakened the empire that it led to its downfall. Now, the facts just aren’t in on what the ‘ultimate’ cause of Angkor’s decline was, or if we can even talk of a single ultimate cause. But it’s certainlly as viable a theory as many others. Harry Benda’s famous theory that the rise of Theravada Buddhism may have even contributed to the decline is just as venerable and just as viable.

Sihanouk, who can’t seem to keep his pen-hand from compulsively writing down every thought that crosses his mind, has an attack to contribute as well.

UPDATE: The controversy over historian Keng Vannsak’s characterization of Jayavarman VII as (a) possibly a Cham, (b) definitely a tyrant, and (c) responsible for the rise of Sukothai via a land-grant to a monk in that area, continues here, which is one of the better articles on the issue thus far. You can also see a lengthy attempt to rebut point by point, here

In this op-ed piece to the Cambodia Daily, one of the Anglophone world’s preeminent historians of Cambodia weighs in on Vannsak’s attribution of non-Khmer ethnicity to Jayavarman VII