Cambodian epic poem, based on the Sanskrit's Ramayana epic. The name means "Glory of Rama". It adapts the Hindu ideas to Buddhist themes and shows the balance of good and evil in the world. Like the Ramayana, it is a philosophical allegory, exploring the ideals of justice and fidelity as embodied by the protagonists, Prince Rama and Queen Sita. The epic is well known among the Khmer people for its portrayal in Khmer dance theatre, called the L'khaon, in various festivals across Cambodia. Scenes from the Reamker are painted on the walls of the Royal Palace in Khmer style, and its predecessor is carved into the walls of the Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei temples. It is considered an integral part of Cambodian culture.

Published in the year 2004, The Cambodian Version of the Ramayana is a valuable contribution to the field of Asian Studies.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book considers painted representations of characters from the Khmer version of the Ramayana, the Reamker. The book opens with an edited version and translation of the Reamker, written in the early 20th century by Thiounn, Minister of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, to celebrate the painting of the famous Reamker murals on the Palace walls. A catalogue of more than sixty individual characters from the Reamker, painted by Chet Chan (a contemporary painter trained at the School of Fine Arts in the 1960s) follows. This catalogue of characters is accompanied by a illustrated essay discussing ways to differentiate and recognise individual characters. A final photo essay details the process through which Chet Chan makes one of his tempera and gold-leaf paintings on silk.

The reader contains 32 selections from some of the most important and best-known works of Cambodian literature in a variety of genres - historical prose, folktales, epic poetry, didactic verse, religious literature, the modern novel, poems and songs, and so forth. It concludes with a bibliography of some sixty items on Cambodian literature. The glossary combines the 4,000 or so items introduced in this reader with the more than 6,000 introduced in the previous two readers.

Powerful poems about Cambodia, awakening from the killing fields to the dawn of free elections.