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From left, Lang Srey, Khmer Rouge survivor, Cornelia Srey, writer, and Pyara Sandhu (Cornelia’s son), co-author of The Wreck of the Saginaw
We love to get mail from readers, but are now receiving more inquiries than we can answer.
We ask that you read the latest edition of the book that prompted your question before contacting us. For Through the Eyes of a Queen and A Pocket Guide to Cambodian Silk, 2024. The Smell of Water, 2019. No Front Line and The Wreck of the Saginaw, 2017.
A Pocket Guide to Cambodian Silk is a consumer guide, originally written to help tourists buy silk (to keep the artform from dying out). If you’re looking for information about a type of silk not generally of interest to tourists, or no longer available, it’s probably not in the Pocket Guide. And the book is about the finished product. If you’re looking for information about the silk-making process, it’s not the right book for you. We developed a classification system for Cambodian silk and standardized nomenclature to make it easier for buyers to ask for what they’re looking for, and have asked collectors and museums to adopt it so we’re all speaking the same language. We added information about Cambodian ikat’s roots in Indian patola because we couldn’t find this information anywhere else, and wanted our readers to have it. But the book is a field guide – readers have asked us to keep it small and light weight. If it doesn’t answer your question, you may need to buy a different type of book. However, if you find something in it that is unclear, or that you think is incorrect, please do e-mail us! Your questions help us to make the book better.
When writing all four of our books about Cambodia we found ourselves with a unique problem. A surprising amount of what we read was incorrect. For example, critical to Lang’s story in The Smell of Water was when the Vietnamese got across the Mekong in their push to capture Phnom Penh. Everything we read said this was January 6, 1979. Lang was sure this wasn’t right, but knew it would be impossible to find an eye witness – civilians had been evacuated, the Khmer Rouge army had retreated, and we were advised that Vietnamese veterans would not talk to us. But we found an eyewitness, in the district police office – their second in command. Ten years old in 1979, he’d doubled back to try to find his parents. From his hiding place on the side of a mountain, he’d watched the Vietnamese as they’d advanced up Highway One. They got across the Mekong the night of January 5. Finally, we had information that made sense.
Cornelia hit the most inconsistencies when she wrote Through the Eyes of a Queen. For example, some scholars wrote that the Khmer alphabet evolved from Brahmi, others said Devanāgarī, and others said Pallava. And Cornelia’s Khmer-language professor told her he didn’t know! Having studied Khmer, Sanskrit, and Cambodian and Indian History, she thought the answer must be Pallava. Take a look:
Now, she’s not a linguist; she got the information for the above from the Internet. But the answer jumps right off the page. And it’s the logical answer – Pallava. She believes that Dr. Sanjeev Sanyal and Dr. Marilia Albanese are correct. Why is this fact of such monumental importance? It underscores the magnitude of the influence of the Pallavas of South India on the emerging Cambodian civilization. Did the other scholars compare the four scripts? Even without the Internet, it’s not hard to do. But none explained why they identified Devanāgarī or Brahmi instead of Pallava.
The first two editions of Through the Eyes of a Queen didn’t contain a bibliography because we honestly didn’t know what to do. Cornelia didn’t want to list any book in which she’d found critical errors because she felt that not all of her readers would be able to pick out what was reasonable, and what wasn’t. For example, few readers have the access to Angkor Wat that she has; when they read that the 1860+ standing women are goddesses, or dancers, or “celestial concubines” or “ladies of the palace”, they can’t go out and look at these figures themselves. And see all the clues that these women were temple and palace staff. None are doing anything super-human (like dancing on a lotus that should sink beneath her weight, or floating through the air). Some are doing the tasks of servants (carrying food, fans, fly whisks or messages). Some are doing their own hair; none have maidservants. They have less brocade in their clothing than the queens. Or the mythical figures, like the apsarā floating up from the Sea of Milk and the dancing apsarā we see on pillars. The apsarā have small, delicate feet; the standing figures have ponderous feet – these are working girls. And their feet aren’t moving; you can’t dance without moving your feet. They’re flaunting their amulets and brocade in a way that “ladies of the palace” wouldn’t. Many are very pretty; according to Zhou Daguan the prettiest girls among the commoners were sent to the palace. But back in the shadows we find many who aren’t, and some who are quite homely. The numbers match – Chinese emissary Zhou Daguan wrote that a century and a half later there were more than a thousand errand-runners for the palace. Finally, the face of each woman is different – like the faces of the Terraacotta Warriors in China, in the tomb of Emperor Qin Chi Huang. I have no doubt that these were real women. The Sanskrit name for this group is devatā. There are four definitions of this word; one is, “with a god”. In the context of Angkor, with Vishnu as his attendant, or with the god-king (Suryavarman II) as his attendant. One reader asked, “But why would Suryavarman II show us his servants?” Angkor Wat is a display of wealth and power; he wanted us to see how many he had. And he may have used these bas relief as propaganda, to put forward that his subjects were happy (most of these figures are smiling). The reader’s question is similar to my own, when I first started writing the book. “Why would Suryavarman II show us his concubines?” My friend Thy Khieu, an exceptionally-knowledgeable tour guide, answered this one. Because they were pretty. The prettiest girls are at the doorways, welcoming you inside. But even they have the ponderous feet of commoners. Thy thinks these were the concubines.
But by the third edition we knew we had to include some form of bibliography. Thinking that we could not be the only writers to have hit this problem, we looked at what others had done. We found one who’d used a “Selected Bibliography”. So that’s what we did. Cornelia added, “I used many reference books in the course of writing this one. These are the ones in which I found no significant errors.” She’s written to many scholars with questions, but only David Chandler, Marilia Albanese and Olivier Cunin replied.
Most important, we think, is to credit the people who got it right. Cornelia dedicated Through the Eyes of a Queen to five people without whose help she couldn’t have written the book at all: Mr. D. S. Sood (Archeological Survey of India), Dr. Sachchidanand Sahai (Apsara Authority), Dr. Archana Shastri (former director of the Mekong Ganga museum in Siem Reap), Makara Lok (Nara Silk) and Thy Khieu (Angkor Tour Guide Association). On the acknowledgements page she thanked 19 more for their help. And in the bibliography she credited George Coedès, David Chandler, Peter Harris, Sanjeev Sanyal, Uday Dokras, Sappho Marchal, Saveros Pou, Sir Monier-Monier Williams, Robert Kirk Headley, Chenla Desai and others.
All of that said, if you have a question after reading the latest edition of one of our books, there are probably other readers out there who have the same question. Please e-mail us, and we will reply. And if you think we should have read an author not on our list, we’ll be grateful for your recommendation. To all of our readers, thank you!