{"id":15306,"date":"2016-12-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/12\/19\/cambodian-scholar-becomes-country-s-first-sanskritist\/"},"modified":"2016-12-19T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T12:00:00","slug":"cambodian-scholar-becomes-country-s-first-sanskritist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2016\/12\/19\/cambodian-scholar-becomes-country-s-first-sanskritist\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambodian Scholar Becomes Country&#8217;s First Sanskritist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambodiadaily.com\/second2\/cambodian-scholar-becomes-countrys-first-sanskritist-122167\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>CAMBODIA, December 20, 2016 (by Hanna Hawkins, Cambodia Daily): Chhom Kunthea became Cambodia&#8217;s first Sanskritist on Friday after receiving a doctorate for her research on the impact the ancient Indian language- on the Khmer language. It is widely accepted that the country&#8217;s primary language could not have developed effectively without interacting with Sanskrit, which is believed to have arrived on Cambodia&#8217;s shores with Indian merchants sometime around year one on the Gregorian calendar. The language was used for written records during the Khmer Empire for more than 1,000 years, researchers believe.<\/p>\n<p>Lois de Menil, the former chair of the Center for Khmer Studies, which provided financial support for Ms. Kunthea&#8217;s studies, said knowledge of Sanskrit was crucial to learning more about Cambodia&#8217;s distant past. &#8220;A major portion of Cambodia&#8217;s ancient history, as recorded on stone inscriptions and in documents, is in Sanskrit because of the enormous influence of Indian culture on Khmer civilization in past centuries,&#8221; she said in an email. At the time Ms. Kunthea began her studies, Sanskrit was not taught at any Cambodian universities, she noted, meaning: &#8220;No Cambodian students could therefore access this central component of Cambodia&#8217;s historical heritage.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source CAMBODIA, December 20, 2016 (by Hanna Hawkins, Cambodia Daily): Chhom Kunthea became Cambodia&#8217;s first Sanskritist on Friday after receiving,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}