Illness, Healing and Care in the Khmer World
For people in the Angkorian Khmer world, illness could bring help from relatives, remedies sold in a market, or treatment at a royal foundation. In the late twelfth century, King Jayavarman VII established hospitals dedicated to Bhaiṣajyaguru, the Buddha of healing. Their inscriptions describe people and supplies assigned to care, while archaeology reveals how hospital chapels fitted into larger compounds.
Hospitals as places of worship and care
The Say Fong inscription, dated 1186–1187, connects healing with Buddhist devotion. It names Bhaiṣajyaguru and two bodhisattvas, Buddhist figures who work to help beings: Sūryavairocana and Candravairocana. The text describes the king as sharing his subjects’ suffering and says he built hospitals to relieve it. The healing image stood in a sanctuary at the center of the foundation, so prayer and medical service formed parts of one institution.
An inscription at Ta Prohm records the founding of 102 hospitals across Jayavarman VII’s realm. At Angkor, four hospital chapels have been identified around Angkor Thom, the walled capital. An inscription at the western chapel, Prasat Tromoung, dates its hospital installation to 1181, the year Jayavarman VII took the throne. Excavation there found foundations for a laterite enclosure wall, a stepped water basin and a small building the excavators call a library. Laterite is an iron-rich stone widely used in Khmer construction. Low platforms around the chapel once supported wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Hearths, pits and animal remains point to nearby domestic activity, and graves lay to the north and west. The chapel was therefore part of a compound with spaces for work and daily life, much of it built from materials that have since disappeared.
The surviving Ta Prohm Kel offers another view of this institutional form. Its sandstone shrine and entrance remain, while the timber structures associated with the compound do not. The small durable sanctuary marks a larger place of care.
Staff, food and medicines
The Say Fong inscription assigns two doctors to the hospital and records a prescribed total of ninety-eight people when assistants are included. It names remedy distributors, storekeepers, cooks and guards. Six women were assigned to heat water and grind medicines, and two to pound unhusked rice; assistants supported these tasks. These assignments show how treatment depended on coordinated labor: remedies had to be prepared and handed out, while food, water and fuel kept the service running.
The inscription says that people of all four castes were to receive care. In Sanskrit usage, the four castes were traditional social categories associated with priests, rulers and warriors, traders, and laborers. The instruction presents the foundation as serving people across those ranked groups.
Storekeepers managed medicine, rice and firewood. Cooks distributed food, fuel and water and cleaned the sanctuary. Rice used in daily offerings was allocated to the sick afterward. The text also names honey, sesame, clarified butter (butter fat separated from its milk solids), sugar and camphor among its supplies, along with many plant and animal substances. Several local ingredient names remain uncertain in the translation, which prevents a secure reconstruction of every remedy.
Regular supplies connected the hospital to royal administration. The inscription schedules deliveries from royal storehouses three times a year and asks future kings to protect the foundation. It also directs that its workers not be diverted to other labor or made to pay tribute. The provisions supported both the religious foundation and the practical work of treating people.
Seeking help in households and markets
Care also took place beyond these royal institutions. A carved domestic scene at Bayon shows women attending an ill person, placing assistance within a household. Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor in 1296–1297, describes drugs sold in markets and ritual practitioners working with people who were sick. His account does not name the medicines, but it shows that a person in need could encounter remedies through market exchange as well as through a hospital.