All the ancient nations in South East Asia considered elephant as the powerful animal for their countries. Apparently, Cambodia, aka descendant of Angkor Empire and the most ancient country in this region, considers elephant as the most important animal for the kingdom since the early formal state establishment in 1st century.
Elephant is considered as the strongest animal and helpful towards the achievement of the kingdom. It should be noticed that if there are a lot of white elephants in the kingdom, residents believe there will be peace and prosperity for the country. In the ancient time, there are many elephants living in evergreen forest throughout the kingdom from northern area of Laos today towards the southern part bordering with Srivijaya Kingdom. According to Khmer History and the sculpture of Elephant in Angkor City, the royal family and Khmer military used elephant in transportation. Everywhere the king and his family went, they used elephants that were raised as the part of royal ownership in the royal palace in which there was a group of men to take care those elephants. Similarly, when there was a war, King and other leaders of the army rode the elephants towards the destination of the enemies or the fighting field with enemies. Moreover, elephants contributed a lot of efforts in the process of building ancient temples in this kingdom. Statues and sculptures of those elephants represent their memory for the kingdom and Khmer People. Until now, elephants remain in less number, but are now being interesting for tourism at Angkor City and Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh. Furthermore, the Khmer craft art embraces the statues of elephant with lively sculpture on their body as the souvenir selling to tourists.
In short, elephants have being taken an important role in daily life of Cambodia from royal family to low ranking people since the ancient time. Elephants will be expected to bring more benefits to the kingdom and to be conserved attentively. Royal Government of Cambodia should promote the love for elephants and increases their number as possible as the chance provided. In the near future, tourists will come to Cambodia more and more and elephants will play an important role to serve all of them in visiting the Kingdom, especially Angkor City. “Elephants are making kingdom prosperous again!” “Love elephants! Love Cambodia!”
By: POK Panhavuth
