Réhabiliter le Funan. Óc Eo ou la première Angkor

Abstract

Éric Bourdonneau “Rehabilitating Funan. Óc Eo, or, the first Angkor” Funanese history is one of the main transitional periods in the history of Southeast Asia. This makes it very susceptible to the changing historiographical positions on the two great issues of Indianization and state-formation. For more than three decades, in reaction to previous studies, the new priority has been to demonstrate how these two processes had no real effect on the cultural and socio-political continuity of the history of the region. Because Funanese history had earlier been taken to illustrate the close connection between Indianization and state-formation, it seemed imperative to review this history, given the perceived importance of the separation of these two processes. The outcome of this new approach is a curious view of Funanese history deprived of its main documentary sources in order to fit the concept of an only superficially Indianized “proto-state”. In that respect, the surprising omission of the “urbanism” of Óc Eo speaks for itself. The purpose of the present paper is to undertake afresh the description of this urbanism and to demonstrate again, thanks in part to newly available data, both its antiquity and the reference to an Indian model. That leads us to rethink the place of Óc Eo in the urban history of the region, and to consider it as a kind of “first Angkor” whose geometric “urbanism” is a major feature of ancient Cambodia.