| A poor farmer of Samre origin named Pou, who
specialised in the cultivation of sweet cucumbers - the seeds of which
he had received in some supernatural manner. He made homage of his first
harvest to the king. The king found them so succulent that he quickly secured
the exclusive rights, ordering Pou to kill anybody, man or beast, who should
enter his "chamkar" (field). In
the season of the rains when the cucumbers were scarce, the sovereign,
impatient for their taste, went himself to visit his gardener - but,
arriving after nightfall, was mortally wounded by Pou with
a blow from his lance. Pou had mistaken his king for a thief and buried as such in
the middle of the field.
The king had no direct descendants, and the dignitaries of the
kingdom, unable to agree on the choice of his successor, resorted to
divine intervention, calling for the "Victory Elephant" to
designate the new king. Stopping just in front of the sweet cucumber
farmer, it "saluted him, lowered its trunk between its feet,
kneeled and, encircling him with its coiling trunk, placed him gently on
its back".
|
So becoming king, the cucumber farmer exhumed the corpse of his
predecessor to celebrate the funerary ceremony at the Mebon, followed by
the rites of cremation at Pre Rup.
The court dignitaries, humilified at
being governed by a Samre, soon expressed their discontent by neglecting
to show any respect. The king, unable to discipline them with either
kindness or cruelty, left the Royal Palace and went to live at some
distance from the city - at Banteay Samre - where he "remained shut
away like a frightened tortoise with its head in its shell". There,
he summoned his ministers who remained loyal to the attributes of the
royalty and the regalia of the old king rather than to the Master
himself and, when he could take no more, resolved to punish them.
Calling for the commode of his predecessor, he decapitated all those who
chose to humiliate him by rather showing their devotion to this
miserable relic of the previous dynasty.
His reign followed from
thenceforth in harmony amongst his followers who, overcome by his
compassion, became faithful to him. |
