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FURTHER-INDIAN BRANCH
405
Before the discovery, in 1935, of the Dong-yen-chau inscription, the earliest Cham documents were attributed to the beginning of the ninth century A.D. See G. Coedès, La plus ancienne inscription en langue cham, "A VOLUME OF EASTERN AND INDIAN STUDIES," presented to Professor F. W. Thomas, C.I.E., Bombay,
1939
The Cham inscriptions are written from left to right, but nowadays, under Moslem influence, the impagination of some Cham books begins with the "last" page. The Cham character has discarded the Indian cerebral consonants; on the other hand, new vowel signs have been created for representing the rich Cham vocalization, and some consonants have been added for Cham peculiar sounds. Nowadays, the Cham character possesses 7 long and 7 short vowels, 9 diphthongs; 5 guttural consonants, 6 palatals, 6 dentals, 6 labials, 4 semi-vowels, 2 sibilants and one aspirate (Fig. 184); see also p. 406.
The Khmers
Khmer is the indigenous term for the region known as Cambodia.
This name is the Europeanized form of the Sanskrit term Kambuja, which is said to have derived from Kambu, the legendary founder of the nation. The Arabs use the indigenous name, Khmer. The Khmer language forms with the Mon (see below) a group which has been called the Mon-Khmer group or subfamily, and is a branch of the Austro-Asiatic family of languages. The area occupied in the remote past by this family was very extensive. Languages with the AustroAsiatic common substratum are still spoken in Assam (Khasi), in Cambodia, Burma, Siam and Annam (Mon and Khmer), on the Malay Peninsula (Senoi), and over the whole of Central India (Kolarian or Munda).
About the middle of the first millennium A.D. or perhaps earlier, immigrants from southern India began to exert a powerful influence over the coastal region, into which they introduced Brahmanism and Sanskrit. This "Hinduizing" process became more marked during the sixth century, when the Khmers as an organized people rose into prominence, obtained their political independence, and took the place of the ancient state called in the Chinese sources Fu-nan. The Khmer kingdom was at its zenith from the ninth to the twelfth centuries A.D. In the first half of the tenth century, the Khmers conquered the valley of Menam from the Mons; in the twelfth, they subdued the Chams. A little afterwards, the advance of the Khmers towards the north brought them into contact with another race, which was in a short time to drive them back on the Mekong and later to seize the hegemony of western Indo-China, This was the race of the Thai or Shans (see below), the ancestors of the modern Siamese. In 1350, the Siamese made a bid for the sovereignty of the whole region and transferred their capital to a more central position. From this time the Khmer empire ceased to hold any sway over the country now called Siam and towards the end of the fourteenth century was given the "coup de grace," when the empire itself was invaded by the Siamese, its capital, Angkor (-Thom), sacked and thousands of prisoners carried off to slavery.
The earliest inscriptions found in Khmer country are in Sanskrit and are undated. Three of them, those connected with the king Bhadravarman, belong probably to the middle of the sixth century (see
