bubalus

"Khmer" pronounced [kʰmaːe] with silent "r" is the mother tongue of most Cambodian people. The letters were borrowed from an ancient Indian alphabet, and this comes as a surprise even to educated Khmer people. The example at hand is an excerpt from an ancient temple inscription:

This is the ancient Khmer word for water buffalo (bubalus bubalis,) pronounced "kraw'bey." What makes this interesting to me is that it is truly an ancient Khmer word, but it's written with old Indian letters. Modern people write it as ក្របី

Bubalus bubalis

Catalog Number: K.582

Name: Inscription of Tûol Tramuṅ

Sources: C II: 200; AIC I: 235-7, IV: 64.

Śaka date: (Śaka 589 = A.D. 667)

Conventional date: The Common Era correspondence is approximately 01:05 hours, Thursday, 30 September, A.D. 667, by the Julian calendar (Billard, 4). AIC, I: 237, likewise gives the year as 589 Çaka (A.D. 667). The year indicated in the first two lines, which open with a seven-place lacuna, was taken by Cœdès to be Śaka 615 (A.D. 693), which is given again in the “Liste générale … “ (C VIII: 171); cf. also CII: 201, note 1.

Provenance: As Cœdès describes it (C II: 200), Tûol Tramuṅ is a piece of high ground in the middle of a reservoir in the phum of Trai Trak, sruk of Koṅ Pisĕi, Kompong Speu province. I fail to find the phum on modern maps but the sruk is located in the southeast of the province about 20 kilometers southeast of Kompong Speu, barely 20 kilometers due southwest of Phnom-Penh. This inscription, on a small schist slab, was found in 1924 and comprises 8 lines: the first 2 in Sanskrit, the following 6 in Khmer.

Synopsis: This short inscription records gifts to Śrī Kedāreśvara made by three individuals: 17 slaves, livestock, a granary, a piece of riceland, and coconut and areca palms. The interest of the terse closing provision is increased by three errors which must be corrected.

https://khmerkhom.wordpress.com/khmer-inscription/

https://sites.google.com/site/firebugpenalty/zrandom/sanskrit-khmer