About early Khmer music

This section is devoted to Khmer music and musical instruments from the 7^th to the 16^th centuries.

Last update: January 19, 2025

Documentary sources

Due to the monsoon climate, ancient information sources are limited. The study of ancient musical and sound instruments is based on various documentary sources:

• Pre-Angkorian, Angkorian, Indian, and Javanese iconography
• Epigraphy in Old Khmer and Sanskrit
• Classical Sanskrit texts from classical India
• Some Chinese texts
• Sound instruments discovered during official or unauthorized excavations
• Ethnological material and resources from intangible heritage

Among the numerous temples accessible today, few offer iconography dedicated to musical instruments. Most depict dancers in canonical poses, but the musicians accompanying these dances are rarely represented.

Here is an alphabetical list of reference sites that have been explored and where at least one iconographic representation related to music has been identified: Angkor Thom,  Angkor Wat, Baphuon, Banteay Chhmar, Banteay Kdei, Banteay Samre, Banteay Srei, Bayon, Western Mebon, Southwest Prasat Chrung, Phnom Bakheng, Phnom Chisor, Phnom Rung (Thailand), Preah Khan of Angkor, Preah Pithu, Preah Vihear, West Gate of Angkor Thom, Sambor Prei Kuk, Ta Prohm, Ta Prohm Kel, Elephant Terrasse, Terrace of Yama (known as the Leper King Terrace), Wat Baset.

These iconographic representations are visible on-site or in museums, primarily the National Museum of Cambodia and the Guimet Museum.

Spatiotemporal references for iconography

The chronological list below indicates the date of probable realization of the iconography of the various referring sites:

Sambor Prei Kuk: 7^th century

Lolei, Preah Ko, Bakong: 9^th century

Preah Vihar: early 10^th century

Prasat Kravan: 921 A.D.

Banteay Srei, Phnom Bakheng: 10^th century

Phnom Chisor: 11^th century

Baphuon, Wat Baset (Battambang): 11^th century

Angkor Wat, west & south galleries: early 12^th century

Banteay Samre: 12^th century

Elephant Terrace, Terrace of Yama also called “Terrace of the Leper King”: 13^th century

Banteay Chhmar, Banteay Kdei, Bayon, Preah Khan of Angkor, Preah Pithu, Prasat Chrung southwest, West Gate of Angkor Thom: late 12^th - early 13^th centuries

Angkor Wat, north gallery: mid. 16^th century

Angkor Wat, frescoes of the central tower: probably 16^th century.

The music of the ancient Khmer

What was the basis of the ancient Khmer musical systems? This question is challenging, as they left no written records or fixed-pitch instruments that would allow us to determine their foundations. However, in light of contemporary ethnology and considering the geographical isolation of populations, it can be hypothesized that before Indianization, each tribal entity possessed its own musical devices. Within these entities, each social function appeared to have its dedicated music. While traces may persist, particularly in certain possession rituals, it would be purely speculative to assert this with certainty.

Nevertheless, we can posit that the basis of Khmer musical devices originated in India, similar to philosophical currents, liturgical tools, and sound practices. However, the influence of other traditions should not be neglected: indigenous, Chinese, Siamese, Malay-Indonesian, Muslim, palatine, and popular. These multiple contributions helped shape a Khmer musical aesthetic distinct from that of India during the same period.

An interesting observation, however, differentiates the Khmer Empire from India: from the first texts of the 7th century until today, Cambodia, in particular, has always possessed fixed-pitch instruments. First the harp, then, from the 16th century, gong chimes, xylophones, and later, metallophones with blades. This structural conservatism has allowed Cambodia to maintain musical continuity.

Traditional Cambodian musicians still preserve standard fixed-pitch instruments, some dating back to the 19th century. These instruments constitute the ultimate witnesses of a probable tuning from ancient periods and attest to the persistence of this tradition.

The musicologist Alain Daniélou wrote: "It is difficult to determine with certainty in what proportions the classical Cambodian system, based on instruments with fixed sounds, resembles one of the ancient Indian systems or represents an independent tradition. Some melodic percussion have always existed in India, and it seems highly probable that the Gandhara-grama system (a seven-tone scale called the "celestial range"), already considered lost by the Sanskrit authors of the classical era, Refers to a melodic scale that is only found today in Indochina and Siam."

The number 7 holds a central position in Vedic cosmology. It is associated with the very name of the country, Sapta Sindhu, and with concepts such as the seven rivers, seven continents, seven islands, seven mountains, seven ṛṣis (the Pleiades), seven musical notes, and seven worlds.

The Khmer musical scale is described as equiheptatonic, meaning that all intervals between the seven degrees of the scale are theoretically equal. This system offers the advantage of great adaptability for accompanying voices of different pitches. On a harp, for example, the musician only needs to change the tonic to transpose the melody, maintaining the same intervals without worrying about alterations. The finger movements thus remain unchanged.

However, this system has the corollary of a certain creative limitation, which may have led Indian musicians to abandon their fixed-pitch instruments. Thus, one could consider that the Khmer Empire, extending over the current territories of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, became a veritable conservatory of ancient Indian traditions. The harp was played there until the 13^th century, and monochord and bichord zithers, as well as the equiheptatonic system, have persisted to this day.

It should be noted that, under the French Protectorate, the equiheptatonic system was gradually "diatonized," preparing the ears of Cambodians for the influx of Western music.

Furthermore, it is almost certain that the seven-note scalar system coexisted with a pentatonic (five-note) system. The latter is still used today by the Khmer and by ethnic minorities living in the forested regions of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, then called Montagnards under French rule.

As far as the Khmer alone are concerned, it is possible to interpret the pentatonic repertoire on fixed-pitch heptatonic instruments, such as xylophones and gong chimes. After all, he who can do more can do less!

Music through the account of Zhou Daguan

Zhou Daguan 周達觀, nickname Ts'ao-t'ing yi-min, was a native of Yong-kia in Tchö-kiang. In 1296-1297, he accompanied a Chinese embassy which spent nearly a year in Cambodia. Back in China, he wrote a book that had disappeared but was partially copied in Chinese annals of 1380. The author brings a few elements on the presence of music. We quote here those translated by Paul Pelliot.*

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* Zhou Daguan et Paul Pelliot, Mémoires sur les coutumes du Cambodge de Tcheou Ta-Kouan, vol. 3, Adrien Maisonneuve, coll. « Œuvres posthumes », 1er mars 2003, 71-03 éd. (1re éd. 1951), 178 p.

For the dead there are no coffins. Only mats are used, and are covered with a stuff. In the funeral procession, these people also use flags, banners and music.

The tch'u-ku [zhugu 苧姑] (monk) shave their heads, wear yellow clothes, reveal their right shoulders. For the lower part of the body they tie a skirt of yellow material, and walk barefoot. (...) Their temples can be covered in tiles. The interior contains only one image, very similar to the Buddha Sakyamuni, and which they call Po-lai. She is dressed in red. Modeled in clay, it is painted in various colors; There is no other image than that. The Buddha towers are all different. They are all melted in bronze. There are no bells, drums, cymbals, banners, or canopies. (...)

When a daughter is born in a family, the father and the mother don't fail to issue for her this vow: “May you in the future become the wife of a hundred and a thousand husbands!”

Between seven and nine years for the daughters of rich houses, and only eleven years for the very poor, a Buddhist priest, Taoist is charged to deflower them. This is called tchen-t'an. (...)

That night we organize a big banquet, with music. (...) In the evening, with palanquins, parasols and music, we go to fetch the priest and bring him back.

With silks of various colors, two pavilions were built; In one of them the young girl is seated; In the other seated the priest. One can not grasp what their mouths say; The sound of the music is deafening and that night it is not forbidden to disturb the night.

I heard that when the time comes, the priest enters the girl's apartment; He defiles it with his hand and collects his first fruits in wine. It is also said that the father and mother, parents and neighbors all mark their heads, or that they taste them. Some also claim that the priest is really united to the young girl; Others deny it. As the Chinese are not allowed to witness these things, the exact truth can not be known.

When the day dawns, the priest is escorted back with palanquins, parasols and music.

The night of tchen-t'an [chentan 陳毯] there are sometimes in one street more than ten families who perform the ceremony; In the city, those who meet the monks or the Taoists cross the streets, there is no place where one can not hear the sounds of music.

The eighth month, there is ngai-lan [ailan 挨藍], we dance. We call actors and musicians who come every day to the royal palace to do the ngai-lan. There are also fighting pigs and elephants. The sovereign also invites foreign ambassadors to attend. It is so for ten days. I am not able to recall exactly what the other months are.