Ta Pech, Khleang Moeung or Sena Moeung (; UNGEGN: , ALA-LC: , ) is a mythical-historical sixteenth century military leader in, and a guardian spirit neak ta whose field of action extends to the entire west of Tonle Sap Lake.
Etymology: treasure, strength or center Khleang Moeung has a mixed Khmer and Thai etymology. Ghlāṃṅ is Khmer for "treasure, keeper for the treasury, storehouse" while Mīoeṅ is Thai for "municipality, region or country”. Thus, keeper of the local treasury. A similar interpretation is made for the name of Thai national hero Pha Mueang who played a significant role in the founding of the Sukhothai Kingdom, freeing Siam from Khmer rule after the reign of Jayavarman VII in the 13th century .
According to another interpretation, khlāṃṅ is also a Siamese word loaned from the Khmer and can take the acception of “magically strong, having a sacred power” which is in tune with qualities attributed to Ghlāṃṅ Mīoeṅ in some legends.
Finally, klāṅ can also mean “the middle” in Thai language. The notion of a “centre” of the territory fits the idea of a “navel of the village” present in old circular villages in the province of Siem Reap as well as in many Thai societies. It designates the central post, phallic in shape, symbolizing the village as a whole in fertility and protection rites.
Sources: conflicting versions of the legend in oral and written traditions Cambodian Royal Chronicles of 1904 and 1906, which were written three centuries after the fact, are the main source for events concerning the life of Khleang Moeung. The story of Khleang Moeung is not recorded in any earlier Chronicles, nor in any other known written document.
The version given in the Cambodian Royal Chronicles “strongly differ” from those kept through oral traditions, especially those of Pursat, as documented first by French ethologist Adhémard Leclère in 1914 and later in more detail by Khmer scholar Khing Hoc Dy and analyzed by French ethnologist Alain Forest.
The Cambodian Royal Chronicles were inspired from oral traditions of Pursat, which in turn the oral traditions were influenced by the Royal Chronicles resulting in a blurred boundary between the Cambodian Royal Chronicles and oral traditions.
While the Cambodian Royal Chronicles closely associates the ritual to commemorate Khleang Moeung's death with Sdach Korn, the story in Pursat links it with the Siamese troops’ attack without showing any connection to Korn's anti-monarchy figure. In fact, the Cambodian Royal Chronicles go as far as to change the Thai-influenced name of Khleang Moeung into the more Khmer Ta Pech, or Diamond General.
Khmer Oral traditions Various legends concerning Khleang Moeung, each with a specific geographical focus, circulate in Cambodia.
Pursat oral tradition According to the oral tradition in Pursat, from the year 1504 a king named Srey Sukonthor ruled the relatively new Kingdom of Cambodia. 1512 saw the end of his rule, when an enthusiastic rebellion successfully overthrew the crown and saw its leader, Sdach Korn, take the throne. The displaced King Sukonthor was killed and his younger brother Chan Reachea – rightful heir to the throne – fled to Siam. In 1516, Chan Reachea managed to convince the King of Siam Ramathibodi II that he had found a white elephant living in the eastern forests. The king excitedly gave Reachea regiments of his own elephant-mounted armies, food, and swords to capture the legendary animal. Once in Cambodia, Chan Reachea used this army to turn against Sdach Korn and face his army in Pursat. As the issue of the battle between the two camps became more and more uncertain, one of his generals, Ta Moeun, dug a pit, filled with poisonous swords and threw himself to a certain death promising to come back. Days later, his spirit returned commanding an army of ghosts which plagued King Korn's forces with diseases such as cholera, eventually helping to win back the throne for Chan Reachea in 1525 who became king as Ang Chan I.
Kampot oral tradition After ethnographic research in the province of Kampot in 1950, French ethnologist André Souyris-Rolland published a research paper recounting an inverted version of the myth of neak ta Khleang Moeung, associated with a king Chey Chettha I.
Cardamom oral tradition According to an oral tradition in the Cardamom Mountains, Khleang Moeung was actually a Pear tribal named Nup who managed to raise the phantom army through the intervention of the tribe's guardian spirit.
This identity is backed by other local stories saying that Khleang Moeung was born in the Cardamom Mountains. The “dance of the wild oxen” and the “dance of the peacocks” performed during the annual homage ceremony are presented in Pursat as a specificity of the ritual recalling the Pear of the Cardamoms.
Written source: Royal Chronicles of Cambodia The first written source on Khleang Moeung is found in the Royal Chronicles of 1906 which recall an early veneration of neak ta Khleang Muong in the 16th century. Facing defeat against the Thai, Khmer general Khleang Moeung threw himself into a ditch of stakes with his wife and three sons at Bakan in Pursat Province. Transformed into an army of ghosts, they sowed the seeds of cholera in the enemy, who were subsequently defeated. His death by unnatural means transformed him into a powerful protective spirit (neak ta). During the reign of Satha I (1576–1594), Longvek itself came under Thai attack. The king protected his capital by venerating the potent Buddha Kaya Siddhi image at Wat Brah Inda Deba and worshipping at the shrine of Khleang Moeung. To counter these supernatural defenses, two wizards disguised as Buddhist monks were sent to Cambodia by the Thai king, probably Naresuan (r. 1590–1605). Gaining the king's confidence, they drove Satha insane, convincing him that his problems emanated from the malign influences of the Buddha Kaya Siddhi and the previously mentioned Buddha of Wat Tralaeng Kaeng. Satha ordered both images to be broken and thrown into the river. The chronicles tell us that this caused the sacred sword of Khmer kingship, preah khan reach, to rust; the waters of a sacred spring at Banon, Battambang Province, dried up; a Buddha image at Wat Vihear Suor, in Srei Santhor, cracked and bled; and the leaves of a bodhi tree at Longvek fell out of season. Cholera spread across the land, and the Thai gained control. Only when the pieces of the sacred images were recovered, reassembled, and restored to their rightful place was the enemy repulsed.
History The legend of Khleang Moeung has inspired Cambodian patriotism and royalism since its inception.
Oral legend attested in Pursat during the 17th century Mikaelian's studies on the power legitimisation of Khmer rulers during the seventeenth century show that the Khleang Moeung story in Pursat also has a connection with ethnic Pear who were in charge of Khmer people royal elephants during those years because it depicts Khleang Moeung as a Pear.
Rewriting the oral legend in the Khmer Royal Chronicles at the beginning of the 20th century At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain rewriting of national Khmer history was needed to reinforce the moral and political power of the Cambodian Royal Palace, which had been shaken by revolts and protests, as well as by the tightening of French colonial rule over the kingdom. More specifically, the reworked narrative contained within the text reflects Sisowath's thinking: his own succession to the throne following his elder brother King Norodom had only come about because the French put him there when Norodom's eldest son Prince Norodom Yukanthor had fallen into disfavour. Sisowath thus instructed the narrative to be rewritten to make Sdach Korn into an unmistakable usurper in order to underline that Srı̄ Sugandhapad's younger brother Ang Chan, like himself, was the legitimate ruler. This formulation helped to justify the legitimacy of Sisowath succeeding his brother in 1904.
A Khmer Joan of Arc in the Crusade for Independence In the twentieth century the legend of Khleang Moeung was utilized by the French protectorate due to the Vichy regime's emphasis on the construction of a Cambodian national identity linked to an idealization of the Angkorean era and the promotion of wartime heroes like Khleang Moeung. A 1943 article in the newspaper Kampuchea likened the spirit of self-sacrifice demonstrated by Khleang Moeung and his wife to Joan of Arc's "valiant conduct and patriotic fervor".
In 1953, after Cambodia gained independence from France, King Norodom Sihanouk built a hall to shelter the grave of Khleang Moeung in Pursat through which the latter acquired a country-wide reputation. When Lon Nol staged a coup to overthrow Sihanouk, the villagers say people saw ominous scars appear on the hill, and blood running out of them.
Civil War: from praise to plunder In 1967, Khmer author Kouy Laut published a novel titled Khleang Moeung with a strong anti-Siamese bend, which would be brought on the stage of the National Theater of Cambodia.
In the early 1970s, as civil war raged in Cambodia, Sos Math — one of the country's most popular singers—had a song entitled “Khleang Moeung's Advice” in which a husband says goodbye to his beloved wife and children as he is about to go to war. “You may perish but your nation survives: Your name will be known everywhere,” the song goes.
However, in Tren Ngea's two-volume classical history book on Cambodia's national past, published between in the 1970s, when telling the story of Sdach Korn's success in claiming the throne as well as his defeat of Ang Chan, the author does not refer explicitly to Khleang Moeung. Instead Tren used the figure ‘Pich’ whom he selectively invested with the various characteristics associated with Khleang Moeung in Cambodian Royal Chronicles.
A rumor starting spreading that one of the great heroes of the past, such as Po Kambo or neak ta Khleang Moeung, would soon be returning to take part in the war in the context of the millennial tinge created by the Civil War.
The Khmers Rouges communists desecrated the sanctuary of the neak ta Khleang Moeung. The Khmer Rouge iconoclasts cut off the statue's head and arms and dumped the pieces into a nearby pond. A year later, the Khmer Rouge ordered a canal be dug across the area. The centuries-old Samrong tree, under which Moeung is said to have sheltered when he trained his troops, was to be removed, which was done not without difficulty.
During the terror perpetrated by the Angkar of the Khmers Rouges, Khmer musician Daran Kravanh details how as a medium of Khleang Moeung he chanted petitions to the neak ta for protection from a certain death.
Resurrecting a national emblem of patriotic royalism In the 1980s and 1990s, following various efforts to reconstruct knowledge of Cambodia's collective past after the Khmer Rouge era, both Sdach Korn and Khleang Moeung both became an integral part of this historical reconstruction.
After the Khmer Rouge were overthrown, the broken pieces of the statue were collected from the pond and put back together in the sanctuary of Pursat that had been completely destroyed. A provincial judge built a wooden shelter to thank neak ta Khleang Moeung after the spirit helped to release Samnang's wife from Khmer Rouge custody.
Khleang Moeung was chosen as the name of one of the best and more successful anti-communist resistance groups that pledged loyalty to the king after the formation of FUNCINPEC in February 1981 and was formally incorporated into the ranks of A.N.S. (Armée nationale sihanoukiste) on 5 March 1979.
National and partisan symbol since 1990