Latest / The Khmer Empire: The Lost Civilization Behind Angkor Wat — Fexingo History / Everyday Life in Angkor: Markets, Medicine, and Marriage
Transcript
- Lucas: We've spent a lot of time on this show talking about the kings, the temples, the grand waterworks — the skeleton of the Khmer Empire. But what about the flesh and blood? The people who actually lived in Angkor, who walked those stone corridors, who sold fish at the market? Luna: It's hard to imagine those giant temples ever being anything but ruins. Lucas: Exactly. But they weren't built in an empty forest. At its peak in the 13th century, Angkor was one of the largest cities in the pre-modern world, with a population estimated at nearly a million people. And we're lucky — we have a kind of time capsule, a detailed eyewitness account of what that city looked like from the inside. Lucas: In 1296, a Chinese diplomat named Zhou Daguan arrived in Angkor as part of a Mongol-sponsored mission. He stayed for about a year and wrote a book called 'The Customs of Cambodia.' It's a vivid, frank, sometimes shocked account of everything he saw. Luna: Like a medieval travel blogger. Lucas: Exactly. And one of the first things he noticed was the markets. He writes that every day, starting at six in the morning, the markets would open. And the striking thing: the sellers were almost all women. Khmer women ran the economy, at least at the retail level. They'd sit on mats with their goods — local rice, fish from the Tonle Sap, imported Chinese ceramics, cloth. Luna: Why only women? Was that a cultural thing? Lucas: Zhou doesn't give a reason, but it's consistent with other evidence that Khmer women had relatively high status and economic independence. He also notes that women married late — often at twenty or older — which was very unusual in a world where girls were often married off as teenagers. And before marriage, they were remarkably free. Zhou says, and I'm paraphrasing, 'the girls of this country are extremely licentious,' which is his prudish way of saying they had premarital relationships without shame. Lucas: But once married, things changed. The husband would move into the wife's family home — a matrilocal custom. And divorce was possible, but if a husband abandoned his wife, he'd have to pay a fine. Adultery by a wife, though, was punished severely: the couple would be forced to work as slaves, often in the city's waste management — cleaning the latrines of the rich. Luna: That's brutal. Lucas: It was. And it gives you a sense of the social hierarchy. Zhou describes a deeply stratified society: at the top, the king and his vast harem — he says the king had 'five wives, one for each cardinal direction and the center,' plus hundreds of concubines. Below them, the nobles and officials, then commoners, and at the bottom, slaves. He estimates that perhaps one in three people in Angkor were slaves — war captives or debt slaves. Luna: That's a staggering number. Lucas: It is. And it points to how the economy ran. The great temples like Ta Prohm and Preah Khan, which we've talked about in earlier episodes, employed thousands of people — dancers, priests, farmers, craftsmen — all supported by the labor of surrounding villages. But Zhou's account also gives us glimpses of everyday justice. He describes a system where disputes were settled by ordeal: accused people would be thrown into the water or forced to dive and retrieve a ring; if they drowned or failed, they were guilty. Luna: That sounds more like superstition than law. Lucas: It does. But it coexisted with written law and royal decrees. Zhou also notes that the Khmer had a sophisticated system of medicine. He mentions that 'the people take great care of their health.' And we know from inscriptions that Jayavarman VII built a network of 102 hospitals — arogyasala — across the empire. They were staffed by doctors, had dormitories, and even offered free treatment. One inscription from a hospital at Preah Khan lists the medicines available: things like pepper, ginger, and tamarind, but also more exotic ingredients like rhinoceros horn. Luna: So they had a real healthcare system. Lucas: For a medieval state, it was remarkable. But Zhou also gives us a look at the king's daily life. He describes a palace complex of multiple buildings, with the king appearing in audiences seated on a golden throne, surrounded by women holding silver betel boxes and fans. When the king left the palace, he would be carried in a litter, preceded by soldiers and musicians. The people had to prostrate themselves on the ground and not look up — if the king's gaze fell on them, it was considered a great honor. Lucas: He also describes magnificent processions, especially during religious festivals. He writes about the king going to the 'Golden Tower' — probably the Bayon — in a grand procession with elephants, banners, and dancers. And he notes that the Khmer had a deep reverence for their ancestors and for sacred images, which were paraded through the streets. Luna: It sounds like the city was constantly in motion. Lucas: It was. And Zhou's account reminds us that Angkor wasn't just a collection of temples — it was a living, breathing city. Merchants from China, India, and the Malay archipelago traded in its markets. Monks chanted in its monasteries. Children played in its streets. And when Zhou left after a year, he took with him memories of a civilization that, even in its late medieval phase, was still vibrant and complex. Luna: It makes you wonder what other cities we're forgetting about. Lucas: That's exactly the right question. Zhou's account is precious because it's so rare. For most of the ancient world, we have no such voice. But here, we have a Chinese visitor who, with a mix of curiosity and condescension, wrote down what he saw. And because of that, we can walk the streets of Angkor in our imagination, seven centuries later.