Kunthea Chhom

Portrait of Kunthea   Chhom

Epigraphist Chhom Kunthea ឆោម គន្ធា (b. 1980) became the first Cambodia-born Sanskritist at international academic level after presenting her doctoral thesis at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) in 2016. She started to specialize in Sanskrit and epigraphy thanks to her BA tutor, the linguist Dr. Sylvain Vogel.

An alumna of Royal University of Fine Arts with various scholarship assignements in India, and a former student under the guidance of linguist Saveros Pou, Kunthea has been working for the Apsara Authority since 2008, specializing in deciphering stone inscriptions from the ancient Khmer Empire. Her research focuses mainly on the development of Old Khmer language which was in close contact with Sanskrit from the 6th to the 14th century CE.

Ang choulean chhom kunthea 2020
Chhom Kunthea and Prof. Ang Choulean attending an award ceremony at RUFA in March 2020 (photo by RUFA).

In additon her epigraphical research, she teaches Sanskrit grammar and Sanskrit inscriptions from Ancient Cambodia at the Faculty of Archaeology, Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh. A founding member of the DHARMA Project, Kunthea Chhom has also headed the Preah Norodom Sihanouk — Angkor Museum in Siem Reap, a joint establishment between Apsara Authority and Sophia University (Tokyo) opened in 2008

Chhom Kunthea’s insights on inscriptions of Cambodia in Sanskrit and Khmer have opened numerous hypotheses for further research, for instance her take on the coining of the term Kambuja in the 8th century, linking the country of the Khmer people to a mythical Shivaite ascet as a reference of prestige.

Read Kunthea Chhom’s autobiographical essay in IIAS Newsletter, vol. 81, Autumn 2018.

Publications

[under construction]

  1. Inscriptions of Koh Ker I, Publications of the Hungarian Southeast Asian Research Institute 1 (series editor: Zsuzsanna Renner), 2011, 334 p.
  2. [with Mathieu Guérin] Le périple de Khim et Nov de Stung Treng à Attopeu en 1883, récit d’exploration cambodgien du XIXe siècle”, Péninsule 69 – 2, 2014, p 163.
  3. Le rôle du sanskrit dans le développement de la langue khmère: Une étude épigraphique du VIe au XIVe siècle, Phnom Penh, Sāstrā Publishing House, 2018, 750 p. ISBN-13 : 9789996392030
  4. [with Arlo Griffiths] A problematic inscription (K. 1237)”, Udaya 19, 2019: 3 – 22.
  5. Le mythe de Kambu chez les Khmers : une pratique sanskritique”, in Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat & Michel Zink eds., Mythes d’origine dans les civilisations de l’Asie, Paris, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2021, p 201 – 14.

Translations

  • [tr. FR>KH] វេយ្យាករណ៍ភាសាសំស្ក្រឹតថ្នាក់មូលដ្ឋាន [A Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language] by Jan Gonda, Utrecht University, published by Buddhist Institute, Phnom Penh 2020, ISBN-13: 9789995050115.

Communications