ANGKOR and I

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64 variations in time and places of residence in the area. They learned about life culture and writing from the indigenous Khmer people, and this eventually led to an ethnic awakening. They acquired knowledge concerning agriculture and began to be self-sufficient. The ethnic groups of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam became aware of the varied people in the vicinity around them, who differed from themselves. This led to the birth of an awareness of themselves as an ethnic group, from the angles of the uniqueness of their language, traditional rituals, local settlement, and living. Just around the 13th century, when the Angkor dynasty began to decline, they began to ascend. The frame of the Khmer empire’s domain began to steadily collapse from the remote areas, from which the autonomy and self-reliance of the neighboring peoples commenced. In Myanmar, the indigenous Pyu people settled in the middle reaches of the Irrawaddy River in the 4th century, and built a nation. However, it was destroyed in 823 by the Nanzhao kingdom that lay in the direction of Yunnan in China. Around the 9th century the Burmese (Myanmarese) arrived into the middle reaches of the Irrawaddy River, and in the 11th century they started the Pagan dynasty. The Thais were originally residents of the Yunnan region, but from the 11th to 12th centuries they began moving south along the Chao Phraya River. The indigenous Mon people were there, and from the 6th to 11th century they created a nation called “Dvaravati” (Chinese name堕羅鉢底). Here the entire picture is not clear, but art works of their time have been discovered from the remains of their residences. The Sukhothai dynasty was established in central Thailand in the 13th century, but in the middle of the 13th century they were liberated from the rule of the Angkor dynasty, and became independent in the latter half of the 13th century.