N.P. : This is a good start. Mieux vaut tard que jamais. (Mais le plus tôt est encore le mieux).

D.S. : What happened to the case of another CPP corrupt (Post and Telecom) Minister? Many other Hun Sen Government members are well known as millionaires. It is fair to start from the top.

N.P. : Y compris Norodom Ranariddh. Voir : http://geocities.com/mesemails2003/email162.html

THE MEKONG BEFORE DOUDART DE LAGREE
APRIL 11th, 2004

At first I have thought of reading Doudart de Lagree, the "explorer of the Mekong", before writing this email. Secondly, if I were to find out that "Mekong" were not a Khmer word, I would be s.o.b.-ing Doudart for not having named "his" miserable, unsignificant stream "L'Ernest", or "Le Doudart", or "La Lagree" ! I'm not over-Khmer-nationalist but let's recognize that the Tibetan, the Chinese, the Burmese, the Thai, the Lao, the Khmer ourselves (Tonle Thom) and the Viet have each one their own calling of the river. The Mekong is worldly known as such because the French happened to come in and take over the whole Indochina ( * ) and then printed this name on all their maps, their history books and their geography books.

Only the French? Wait a minute! I've just read the following. [ Lu dans Monographie du Cambodge, 1931, par René MORIZON, licencié en droit, administrateur civil en Indochine : L'arrivée des Portugais au Cambodge remonte à 1541 : elle est illustrée par le naufrage de Camoëns aux bouches du Mékong. La légende veut que la seule chose qu'il sauva du désastre fut son manuscrit des Lusiades. << Par les plaines du Cambodge coule le fleuve Mékong souverain des Eaux, grossi de mille autres rivières qui, l'été, lui apportent leurs eaux >>, il s'enfle comme le Nil et couvre au loin les campagnes. (...)].

The above was in Portuguese by Camoëns translated into French by Morizon. So the Portuguese sailor Camoëns knew Cambodia and its river Mekong at the delta of which his ship sank down in 1541. He had seen the river in both the dry and wet seasons (il s'enfle comme le Nil et ...) and he dubbed the river "souverain des Eaux". To me there is no doubt : Mekong is a Khmer word meaning "Mother Ganga" or "Chief of Waters". Let's notice that the Spaniard and the English had kept the name of the Mississippi which means "Boat Buster" in Amerindian. Camdiscers have seen a map of Lovek on the riverbank of Tonle Sap by the priest Gaspar de Cruz. Probably the latter had said something on the Mekong in his book.

Let's keep on reading Morizon on Christian missions in Cambodia : [ Le père Gaspard de Cruz, le premier y prêcha l'évangile en 1550. Il fut bientôt suivi des pères Louis Cardoso et Jean Madeira (1553), la première mission catholique portugaise était fondée dans l'empire khmer. Elle s'accrut en 1558 des pères Lopez et d'Avézedo qui avaient quitté le Portugal pour répandre au Cambodge la foi du Christ. Moins heureux que leurs prédécesseurs ou, peut-être, moins adroits, leur prédication mécontenta les bonzes qui obtinrent que l'on chassât la mission. (...) Le père Chevreuil, son fondateur (d'une chrétienté française), avait eu à lutter durement dès le début. En 1666, en effet, une guerre ayant éclaté entre la Cochinchine et le Cambodge, les missions françaises avaient été détruites et seul le père Chevreuil était resté sur les lieux. Il créa deux ans plus tard la chrétienté de Ponhea-Lu. ]

I wish to recall a map of Indochina by Alexandre de Rhodes reproduced in my book Kampuchea Ning Sahapoanth IndouChin with Chan Dara and Ith Thong Nguon, Montréal 1983. A. de Rhodes, who stayed only three years (1627-30) in Tonkin, had drawn the whole Indochinese peninsula and mentioned a "désert ou solitude de Cochin Chine", a spot along the "Cordillère annamite" and the "farouches guerriers kamers". I think the Mekong with its name was on the map.

Now the little name or nickname and the stone inscription. Everything has its little name, particularly with the adjectives Toch (little) or Thom (big). Official names given by kings, brahmins, monks, educated people : Tonlé Mé Gang, Tonlé Sab. Little names given by ordinary people : Tonlé Thom, Tonlé Toch. In Phnom Penh, the pagodas Wat Srah Chawk and Wat Thann have certainly their official Pali names, something like Muni Vaddhanaram .... Mé Gang was not carved in stone? Neither were Preah Trapairng and Battambang! Not even Angkor but rather Yasodharapura. Anyway many temples, monolithes and statues have been destroyed by time, or vandalized or stolen. Maybe around 802 A.D. a couple of monolithes were standing on the riverbank of the Tonlé Thom and read in Sanskrit-Khmer : "This is the mighty Mé Gang, the feeder of the kingdom of the great Jayavarman II".

( * )  These French explorers all came in after the Portuguese and Spaniard : Henri Mouhot meurt à Luang Prabang in 1861. Doudart de Lagrée effectuait sa mission de 1866 à 1868.