Do you ever wonder where authority comes from? How did kings start? It's a weird thing to think about, but there was a time before States, before presidents, before kingdoms. Somebody had to start all that stuff, and naturally it wouldn't just start it in one place at one time. They would have spread across the world- there wasn't some great obelisk that came down and just changed everybody's ideas. It was neighboring tribes invading, coming in, and spreading the new thought Today's video is on the rise of the god-king and how India gave Cambodia its authority to rule. Let's start our story at a river covered in hundreds if not thousands of symbolic penises. And I know there's gonna be somebody who's mad at me about saying that but what do you want from me? Symbolic phalluses , that sounds too clinical. If I'm gonna get in trouble for it anyway, I want to use the 1950's detective name Dick River. Jokes aside, the Khmer name is Kabal Spean and it's about an hour outside of Siem Reap. It feeds a larger river that was once the source of water for Angkor Thom, then the largest city on earth. it was spiritually vital. It was the source of life and death for their entire society. A good king was expected to keep the river under control, after all he was God. Let's talk about the carvings. While there are a number of different carvings here, I want you to focus on the two most important, the Lingam and the Yoni. if you ask a modern Cambodian, they'd probably say they're Buddhist because they've been adopted by Buddhism. Some might go deeper and even say they were Hindu, having been carved by Hindu hermits, but really they're both and neither. They're older than all that. These symbols in this Cambodian River, which once served to spiritually protect a Khmer city, are Indian. They're ancient Indian fertility symbols. They probably predate kings at least as a concept. They certainly predate writing and even though it's pure speculation, I wouldn't really be surprised to find out that they predated formal religion. Together they form a complete union of man and woman and are symbolic of rebirth in every religion that uses them. In Hinduism they're meant to be Shiva and his consort Parvati what Shiva destroys she recreates. Together they represent the destruction and regrowth of all things. Temples in Angkor were built around them with the King's Lingam serving as the spiritual center of the Empire. When placed in its corresponding Yoni , the universe should Theoretically have been in balance. And there are people who fundamentally deny that these are in any way representative of genitalia Which I find kind of funny because the feminine word for phallus is Yanis, which comes from yoni. But I suppose that there are people who just don't want sex in their religion at all, they feel that it taints it. But early religions were all about sex and kept strict rules and customs to sustain fertility, keeping the cycle of life moving forward makes sense in early religion. Death in ancient societies would have meant constantly having children and hoping against hope that they'd somehow survive to adulthood. There are carvings of pregnant women from thirty seven thousand years ago. For comparison that's thirty two thousand more years ago than Stonehenge, Cro-magnon man was still walking the earth when these were carved. And those are just the ones we've found so far. Fertility symbols are ancient. It says a great deal that these specific symbols would exist here because they're not the only Indian symbols that exist in Cambodia. This was once the far limits of Greater India and an ancient cultural push eastward from the Subcontinent has left a huge mark on this country. If you walk the streets here You're constantly witnessing ancient Indian symbols. For example almost every traffic roundabout Has a Naga in the centre, a pre Hindu symbol representing a king cobra. But in Hindu texts the first Cambodian Queen is referred to as the leader of the Nagas. Probably because she was such a fighter. But this isn't an episode about symbols specifically, it's an episode about authority. India came with more than just the Naga, they came with their culture in total like Catholics with their Divine Right of Kings, Early hindu rulers derived their power from being one with god, or as they called it Hari Hara. They were God Kings, Either in touch with or equal to the Supreme Being and they passed that power to their ruling class known as Brahmin. Ambitious Brahmin headed east out of India looking for their own lands to control, to become god-kings all their own. And they started to conquer these animus lands to the east now Cambodia and impose upon them the will of the Hari Hara. Bringing with them the authority that had made them the ruling class in India in the first place. These Brahmins spread all the way to the coast of Vietnam and even down into Indonesia, But they had perhaps their most profound effect here in Cambodia. In the first century AD a Brahma by the name of Kaundinya Conquered the Khmer and married their ruler, a woman named Soma The Naga Queen from before. He would no doubt bring in Indian experts in writing, administration, religion, and farming. And they would fundamentally alter the way the local people were living. In doing so he'd set up a new Kingdom, which we now called a funan, but the authority behind his power came from India, just like the symbols. He was the ruling class of a country a thousand miles away, transferring this authority onto a new people. And it stuck. the Funan Kingdom lasted for 500 years, without a great deal of written history we don't know all too much about it, but we do know what replaced it. From the ashes of Hunan grew the Khmer Empire It's God Kings rose to heights that out shown any of the Indianized Kings that had preceded them, But they didn't forget their roots. The Angkor Empire derived its authority from the same source as its predecessors. Despite having Khmer rulers, it never forgot its Indian heritage. The Divine Right of kings that provided this Authority was now forever rooted in those original brahman. But if your authority is derived from being a God incarnate And you rule over one of the largest farming empires in human history, chances are you'll do anything to control nature Particularly water, because it's the key to the harvest especially in a rice growing society If you don't control water, your farms are going to be destroyed - your kingdom may collapse. After all you're clearly not being a very good god. To control the water one of these khmer kings gets a great idea; if the Lingam represents the power of the nation and spiritually provides growth and rebirth, Placing it in the river would almost be like turning the entire river into holy water. And in spite of my jokes, the Lingam is more than just a dick statue. It Represents Shiva and in the Cambodian Hari Hara system Shiva was one of the aspects of God that the king was supposed to be representing. So by putting his symbol in this river. He was not so subtly saying that he had taken this water under his authority. While modern Cambodia has an elected monarchy with no direct lineage to those original Hindu leaders, the authority for this state is still rooted in that Brahman who first ruled over the Khmer. Despite the introduction of states, the collapse of Hinduism, and the retreat of Indian culture out of Southeast Asia The symbols are still here. Hotels have Lingam and yoni in their pools to purify the water, Naga are on every street corner. This is a nation that has found its own future no question. But the authority that it relies on to exert control, is forever carved into a river of dicks. By the power vested in me, This is Rare Earth. Hello Cambodia...
