Trent Walker
PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley
ne of the most celebrated liturgical texts in Khmer is known as padum thvāy phkā, or “Lotus Flower Offering”. Performed in a wide variety of rituals, including Buddha image consecrations, “Lotus Flower Offering” is especially known for its soaring, melismatic melody made famous by Pāḷāt' 'Un in the early twentieth century. Many versions of the text exist, in printed, manuscript, and oral forms, but no precise date or author can be determined. However, offerings of lotus flowers occur frequently in Pali and Khmer texts in Cambodia, including epigraphical sources such as the “Inscriptions Modernes d'Angkor” (IMA), some forty-odd texts inscribed in stone on the walls of Angkor Wat during the Cambodian Middle Period (1431–1863). Among these inscriptions, scholars have long celebrated IMA 38, also known as “La Grande Inscription d’Angkor”, as the earliest Khmer verse inscription, dating to 1701 CE. This paper argues that another inscription, IMA 31 from 1684 CE, is in fact the earliest verse inscription in Khmer and that both IMA 38 and 31 have a close intertextual relationship with the “Lotus Flower Offering”, revealing liturgical continuities between Buddhist practice in the Middle Period and the present.
(Presented in the 2014 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: Flower Culture in Asia, 8-9 July 2014, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, and Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)