Voak (Monkey)

The four portraits below come from an illustrated Khmer manuscript of the Musée Guimet in Paris (MA 1903), a folding book of the kind called krāṃṅ, bought by the museum in 1957; a name pencilled on one of its covers suggests it was acquired during Doudart de Lagrée's expedition of 1866–68. Its first part briefly interprets the horoscopes by the cycle of the twelve year-animals, as a memory aid for the astrologer (horā); the translation is Sunseng Sunkimmeng's (1977). Porée-Maspero gives the principle: according to the quarter of the year in which one is born, the particular variety of the animal determines character and destiny.

The quarters are lunar months of the Khmer calendar. The European months beside them are only a guide: as the translator warns, in reality the two overlap.

Khmer treatises do not group the months in the same way: some begin the first quarter with Meakase, others with Phalkun or with Chet (Porée-Maspero). We follow the Guimet manuscript, which begins with Chet.

Chet, Pisakh, Jesth (about April–June)

Monkey of the forests
Would be illustrious, very good.
In the manuscript: A pink monkey walking on two legs.

Asadh, Srap, Photrabot (about July–October)

Brahmin monkey (svā brāhm, the name of a species: a fairly rare large monkey with a long tail, long legs and a bluish-grey coat, after Aymonier's dictionary; "brahmin" is a popular etymology, for in Old Khmer the word is written -vrām, never Sanskrit -vrāhmaṇa, notes Saveros Pou)
In the manuscript: A yellow monkey holding a pineapple, chequered black on yellow with red dots, with green leaves.

Asoch, Kadoek, Meakase (about October–December)

Dwarf monkey (the name of a species; a macaque?)
Good, but one should beware of the woman.
In the manuscript: A white monkey climbing on a dark-blue female monkey.

Bos, Meak, Phalkun (about January–March)

Domestic monkey
Afflicted.
In the manuscript: A yellow monkey holding a pink crab.

The Prohmocat (Prohmočatě) is the second part of a manuscript that an ācār, a master of ceremonies, of Phnom Penh lent to Éveline Porée-Maspero, who calls it ms. B. She found no Khmer work on the twelve-year cycle as a whole: what is known lies scattered in the treatises of the ācār. She summarised this one in two tables, given here column by column; because it reaches us as a summary and not as a full translation, it comes after the Guimet manuscript. The months are the ones the manuscript writes, grouped its own way; those she prints in italics are "out of place".

Part of the body of Prohmocat

Thigh

Planet in the mouth

Moon

Race

yăk, male

Element

Iron that Práḥ Čằnt carries on his shoulder

Origin

The jackfruit tree

Dangerous ages

8, 24, 27, 69

Episode

Piythŭr is tied by the yokkh Baṇaka to the tail of his horse, which flies to the kingdom of the nāga; he preaches to the nāga, and Baṇaka is converted (Vidhura, Jātaka no. 545).

General forecast

A supple mouth, a supple character, knowledge of what is meritorious. If one leaves one's birthplace in childhood, one will reach old age. Through a woman one will have objects of silver and gold, precious fabrics, oxen, buffaloes, elephants, horses.

Chet, Pisakh, Jesth

Animal: Bodhisattva monkey, who has a retinue
Element: Iron
Character: A supple character, who knows meritorious acts. Just words.
Other forecasts: Will oblige an eminent dignitary. If he is the child of a free man, he may "eat the country". Many slaves and followers.

Asadh, Srap, Photrabot

Animal: Monkey that wanders in the forest, begging alms
Element: Sharpened iron
Character: Does not know how to listen.
Agriculture: Good.
Administration: Bad.
Other forecasts: Many oxen, buffaloes, elephants, horses.

Asoch, Kadoek, Meakase

Animal: Prăm monkey that wishes to speak…
Element: Tinplate, very easily scratched
Character: Bad feelings.
Commerce and administration: Middling.

Bos, Meak, Phalkun

Animal: Gibbon that feeds with difficulty
Element: Pure iron
Character: A supple character, thanks to which one will succeed until old age.
Agriculture: Hardly good.
Administration: Middling, if he attaches himself to a dignitary.
Other forecasts: Many children.

The animal changes at Moha Songkran, the Khmer New Year, in April. In 2026 the Ministry of Cults and Religion announced Moha Songkran for 14 April at 10:48 in the morning, the start of the year of the Horse; so the first days of a Western year still belong to the animal before — of 1910, Leclère writes that its first hundred and two days belonged to the previous Cambodian year. The table gives the day of Moha Songkran for each year of the Monkey from 1900 to 2027, as the calendar of the site computes it after Eade; only the day is given, not the hour.

• Victory: Monday
• Happiness: Tuesday
• Ruin: Wednesday
• Luck: Thursday
• Power: Friday
• Death: Saturday
• Karma: Sunday

The days of the week that a treatise of the Commission of Customs of Cambodia (MCC 30.012) gives this animal for victory, happiness, ruin, luck, power, death and karma, as Porée-Maspero reproduces it; another manuscript (ms. A) inverts the last two. Many farmers begin the harvest on one of the lucky days of their year of birth.

Khmer treatises tie each year to a whole series of correspondences (Porée-Maspero). The Monkey year is the child of Čhattónt, the elephant with tusks of six colours. Its "seat" (tinan) is Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. Among the agents of the children's illness called skan, the one linked to it is the owl; amulets, medicines and offerings vary with the agent. The sacred text recited in Monkey years, or in private ceremonies by the date of birth, is the Vipassissa yatoham.

These correspondences follow the general table of Porée-Maspero, who studies their divergences separately; for the sacred texts, she warns, the documents do not agree, and she gives four different lists.

According to Bizot, by the year of one's birth one receives as "seat" one of eight figures of the epic. The seat serves to draw forecasts and to know, in illness, which offerings to make and in which direction to carry them; the treatises then distinguish the childhood, youth, middle age and old age of each figure, periods that correspond to the four quarters of the year (Porée-Maspero). In the method that Bizot calls the "Eight influences", the seat is found from the person's age on a grid of numbers; and he warns that lists matching the years to the figures are "incomplete, scattered, hard to use", later than the introduction of the first versions of the Rāmāyaṇa at Angkor, and in the end little used by the diviners themselves.

Two Khmer legends tell where the cycle comes from. In the first, after the earth was formed an ascetic came down, created a man and a woman, and allowed them to count time by the twelve years named after animals. In the second, Práḥ Eysór (Śiva) wished people to be able to count time and summoned all the animals to draw lots for the names of the years. The King of the Elephants was nearly there when a little rat living in a tree asked him where he was going; the elephant told him, and the rat asked leave to climb onto his ear, which was granted. When the elephant came before Práḥ Eysór, the god wished to know who had arrived first. Just as the elephant was about to answer, the rat jumped to the ground, sat in a winnowing basket, joined his hands and said: "It is I who am first." The furious elephant refused to be counted among the animals drawn by lot.

The animal of birth rules many rites. Writing of the peoples of the Indochinese peninsula as a whole, Bizot says that it settles the treatment and the sacrifices for the sick, the prayers against misfortune, the right moment to enter a new house, and the horoscopes that allow or forbid a journey or a marriage. In Cambodia many farmers begin the harvest on one of the lucky days of their year of birth; and when the nine stone "roots" of a pagoda's sema fall all together, if the animal of birth of the chief of the monastery is that of the year of the ceremony, he must go far enough away not to hear the signal of their fall, or he would die (Porée-Maspero). Faraut writes that believers wear jewels showing the animals, whole or in part, as amulets, to protect themselves from the spells of the evil genie. In the region of Battambang, when the columns of a house are raised in a Monkey year, the foot of the column is anointed three times with perfumed oil before it is set in a pit lined with white cloth (Porée-Maspero).

For a marriage, the "races" of the spouses must agree. The years are divided among three races: the gods (tevoda) — Rat, Naga, Horse, Goat; the humans — Ox, Hare, Snake, Pig; and the yăk, giants who eat human flesh, can move through the air and can take human form — Tiger, Monkey, Rooster, Dog. A union between a human and a yăk is bad, like that of Nang Kangrei and Práḥ Puthisen: the ogress, abandoned by her human lover, died of despair, and her body became the Phnom Nang Kangrei. A union between a human and a god brings trials but in the end is very happy, like the marriage of Nang Monorea and Práḥ Sothon. A union between two people of the same race "has no story" (Porée-Maspero).

The Monkey belongs to the yăk. Its seat is Rāma. The seats of the spouses must not be hostile, as Rāvaṇa and Sītā are (Porée-Maspero); Bizot adds that young people whose seats are Rāvaṇa and Sītā, or who belong to the race of the yăk and to that of the gods, cannot marry without danger.

Below, the fortune and the forecast of each couple according to a treatise of the Commission of Customs of Cambodia (MCC 54.015), as Porée-Maspero gives it. Words in square brackets are, as a rule, the version the treatise gives when the couple is named the other way round. Porée-Maspero notes that, contrary to the usual Khmer practice, the man is named first in the texts that give the element of each spouse; so in the couple Rat + Ox the man might be the Rat, and in Ox + Rat the Ox — but the differences might also come from corrupted texts. The variants of two other treatises are not given here.

Jut (Rat) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Market overseer. [Doorkeeper.]
Forecast: Quarrels. [Middling.]

Chhlov (Ox) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Sethĕi. [Dignitary.]
Forecast: Quarrels. [Very good.]

Khal (Tiger) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Trader [in gold].
Forecast: Goods from the start. [Great success in trade.]

Thos (Hare) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Ox merchant. [Owl.]
Forecast: Mutual love shows itself well. [Quarrels.]

Rong (Naga) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: A fighting asura.
Forecast: Bad. Modest means. [Many goods.]

Masanh (Snake) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Sethĕi.
Forecast: Many horses and elephants.

Mami (Horse) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Sethĕi. [Free man.]
Forecast: Good. [Many goods.]

Mame (Goat) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: A dignitary who attaches himself to a courtier.
Forecast: Very good.

Voak (Monkey) + Voak (Monkey)

Fortune: Dignitary.
Forecast: Children who do not survive.

Voak (Monkey) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Mandarin. [An ox in the pen.]
Forecast: Some goods. Much happiness. [Always bad.]

Voak (Monkey) + Cha (Dog)

Fortune: A dog holding its young in its mouth.
Forecast: Bad. [Many goods. Quarrels.]

Voak (Monkey) + Kor (Pig)

Fortune: A dog living under the eaves of the thatched roof. [Mandarin.]
Forecast: [Constant happiness.]