Gatilok

Gatilok was composed between 1914 and 1921, a period during which Achar Ind was living in Phnom Penh.

Achar Ind's famous collection of traditional stories, Gatilok, was one of the first examples of a collection written for serialization in a periodical in modern Khmer literature. Although the periodical had fairly low circulation figures, it became common for monks to read out sections during sermons and other public events, as Khmer people would enjoy this new form of literature as "listening to newspapers" (sdap-kaset).^[6]

Gatilok, in its subtitle "Law for how to behave oneself", had a lasting influence on Cambodian literature and society so much so that more than one palimpsest was published thereafter. While Khmer moral treatises known as tunmeay used to describe a "Gargantuan cosmogony", Achar Ind updated the genre and made it modern and appealing to Khmer readers.^[7] In the wake of the Sangkum era, writers such as Khun Srun wrote updated guidelines with the same title.

Achar Ind wrote fables and fairy tales in which he recorded the experiences he gained in the civil service and at court.^[8] As a vernacular Theravada Buddhist text, it relates more to the "little" Buddhist tradition. The Gatilok is concerned with sâtisampajania, the practical application of moral judgment. The word sâtisampajania is composed of sati, meaning "mindfulness and clarity", and sampajañña, meaning "discrimination" or "attention" or "awareness".^[9]

In the context of a fast-changing urban society in Cambodian cities influenced by the Western world and the modernization of the royal Khmer court, the main question asked by this series of narratives could be condensed as: "how to behave as good Khmer Buddhists and moral persons, and simultaneously, how to purify themselves in the context of everyday life in a modernizing world"?^[10] To do this, Khmer teachers innovated through their translation and teaching methods which also encourage the dissemination of knowledge on a larger scale, particularly to lay people, through printed rather than handwritten textual productions.^[11] In the Gatilok of Ind, this methodology is based on Buddhist literary conventions that advocate storytelling as a mode of critical reflection. Indeed, after having presented the teachings of the Buddha by selecting extracts from traditional texts, a commentary for the attention of the reader is written in the form of narration (sometimes also in prose or verse) with the aim of initiating reflection and guide him in analyzing the meaning of the previous extract. This is why Hansen conceives of Gatilok as a kind of "moral laboratory", where the reader is called to apply his critical reflections to his own life.^[12]

Khmer writer Tauch Chhuong explains how the Gatilok, one of the major works of Ind, meticulously describes life in Battambang during the era of Governor Kathathan Chhum. Ind is then very well known in the region. The local intelligentsia as well as ordinary Cambodians often come to listen to him speak, and his writings are widely circulated.^[13] Hansen explains that in addition to outlining the contours of moral conduct applicable to lay people, Gatilok is intended to be a means for Ind to offer social criticism.^[14] For example, Achar Ind criticizes the cult of various Brahmanical deities such as the sacred cow (Preah Ko) and grandmother Daeb (yày daeb), arguing that "since we are lay followers of the religion of the Buddha it is not right to venerate [these statues]."

Beyond a self-critique, some have read between the lines of the fables of the Gatilok, and found a nationalist pamphlet, in veiled opposition against the French protectorate. This can be seen through the recourse of the theme of the anti-opium crusade in parallel of the Opium Wars in China, which eventually took on an anti-French flavor also in Cambodia. The theme is taken up in Ind's famous collection of stories, Gatilok, particularly in the tale of the "Oknya who smoked opium who used his influence to harm inhabitants of the region".^[15]

Veiled references in a story contrasting the lives of free wild dogs and enslaved domesticated dogs were clearly meant to rebuke Khmer officials aligning themselves too closely with the French protectorate.