PERIOD OF CAMBODIAN HISTORY
The inscription the inhabitant of Cambodia are Kambuja "descendents of Kambu" The legendary founder of their race. Their country is called Kambujadesa, " land of the Kambuja" and sometime simply Kambuja. But these names were probably given them by the Indian hierarchy who wrote the inscriptions. In their legends they called the country Kok Thlok, or " land of the Thlok (tree)", and later srok Khmer "country of Khmers". Cham inscription called them first Kambuja, or Kamvuja, later Kvir, or Khmer. Arab travelers of night and tenth centuries called them Kamar, Kimer, komar, and Kumar and Khmer. Chinese writers called the country Chenla, which if it is not a transliteration of Kambuja, was used by Chinese in that sense. The term Khmer, practically used synonymous, with Kambuja, is the adjective generally used with Empire and history aims to cover more then Kambujadesa proper.
We do not know what the people of the earliest kingdom of the Mekong delta called themselves, but the Chinese called their country Funan. A vassal kingdom of the Funan, just above it on the Mekong, was called Chenla by Chinese. About the middle of sixth century, Chenla, which had apparently become independent, reduced Funan to vassalage and later annexed it. As the people of two countries were practically the same, and as the transformation took place without more trouble then accompanies a change of dynasty, this earliest, or formative period of Cambodian history may be spoken of, not too improperly, as the Funan period.
Chenla seem to have been the Chinese equivalent of Kambujadesa, But in this period the people rarely, if ever, called their country Kambuja, at least in the inscriptions. They designated their country by the name of the capital city, whatever it might be, and this in turn was often called after monarch; e.g. Isanapura "city (or country) of Isanavarman". After the founding of the Khmer kingdom by Jayavarman II on Mount Mahendra in 802, the inscriptions use the terms Kambuja and Kambujadesa; consequently, this date will taken as the end of what we will call the Chenla Period, although the Chinese continued to used the term Chenla to designated Cambodia.
The Kambuja or Angkor period extended from 802 to capture of Angkor by the Siamese in 1431 and the definitive removal of the capital to southern part of kingdom in 1432. During all this period, the capital was at, or near, Angkor. This was the Classical period of Cambodian history-the period of the far-flung empire, of the marvelous works of architecture and art, of the wonderful Sanskrit inscription.
The country maintained a more or less independent existence for more then five centuries, whit its capital in the vicinity of modern Phnom Penh and whit constantly-diminishing boundary. In art religion, and every thing that goes to make up a culture, the transformation was great. Europeans began to frequent southeastern Asian, and Kambuja become Camboxa, Camboja, Camboya, Camboie, Kamboie (Portuguese and Spanish), Cambodge (French), and Cambodia (English). We will called this the Cambodia Period.
Fanally, in 1864 Fraance established a protectorat over the country, restored its historic history boundaries, and tried to awaken in it habitants the spirirt of thire former greatness. The later peroid will be called the Frence Protectorat.
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